McLaren Executive Racing Director Andrea Stella says pit stops are among the areas the team can still improve upon, as they seek to close the gap to F1's top teams. "I think there's some aspects where we can lean to the top," Stella told media, including RacingNews365.com , when asked to rate McLaren’s performance relative to the rest of the field. "We can do very quick stops. According to some metrics, we now lie between the second and third best team on pit stops. [To] become the best, I think there's a good one year of work, if we take that single part of going racing, for instance. "There's some other aspects of going racing where I think we are quite competitive already – the race strategy, for example. "There's some other aspects in which we want to do a better job. There's some elements of the operations this year [in which we] have some opportunities. "So, I would say, work to do, but not necessarily too far. We are starting to get optimistic and encouraged that we are gradually moving towards the top."
McLaren set fastest pit stop of 2022
McLaren notably finished second in DHL's ranking of the season's fastest pit stops, in which teams are awarded points on the same basis as the official F1 Championship standings. Red Bull took that particular gong with 534 points, while McLaren finished on 427, a long way ahead of AlphaTauri in third on 257 points. While McLaren may have lost out to Red Bull over the course of the season, the Woking squad can nevertheless lay claim to the fastest individual pit stop of 2022, with McLaren's mechanics changing all four tyres on Daniel Ricciardo's car in just 1.98 seconds at the Mexico City Grand Prix. However, though McLaren took the crown for fastest pit stop, Red Bull can still lay claim to greater consistency with the wheel guns, as the drinks-backed squad made five of the ten fastest pit stops over the course of the 2022 season.
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