McLaren now has fastest pit stops, says Michael

The McLaren guys have been working hard to improve the stops

McLaren sporting director Sam Michael insists that the team potentially now has the fastest pit stops in the field after overcoming some problems earlier in the season.

However that improved performance wasn’t obvious in Montreal where Lewis Hamilton in particular was slow getting away from the pits due to a clutch issue.

“Pit stops are definitely better,” said Michael. “What we’ve done is work a lot on equipment, and also the people. We brought a lot of things like retained wheel nuts, quick release jacks, a traffic light system, so really for McLaren for the whole lot we’ve been on an upward curve on equipment to get it right. We’ve changed a lot of people around as well. We’ve been fixed now for the last three races.

“We’re now averaging 2.5s pit stops through practice. We think we can average here sub 3s, which is better than any other team in the pit lane. The pace that we showed in Montreal in the pit stops supports that. We had a few issues with the clutch release, getting away, but even with all the issues we had our fastest pit lane times were only 0.2s off the quickest.

“If everything had gone right in Montreal we would have averaged 0.7s quicker than everybody. There’s no doubt that the guys have improved significantly, and their confidence is building.”