Oscar Piastri takes DHL Fastest Pit Stop in Mexico to limit the damage

Starting from seventh place, Oscar Piastri faced a herculean task at the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez. But while his closest rival for the world championship, teammate Lando Norris, was able to defend his pole position as the race began, Piastri found himself down in ninth place after the start.

For most of the Mexican Grand Prix, he was stuck up the exhaust pipe of a Mercedes – up the back of George Russell initially, followed then by Kimi Antonelli. Piastri piled on the pressure relentlessly on the two Mercedes drivers but was unable to overtake them. So on lap 47, McLaren decided to pull off an ace move as regards strategy.

Piastri was instructed to pit and switch from Medium to Soft tires. At the same time, Antonelli also turned into the pits. While Piastri’s first stop took 3.59 seconds, this second tire change went without a hitch. His crew turned him around and sent him back on his way in just 2.10 seconds. Thanks to the Fastest Pit Stop of the race, Piastri was able to overtake Antonelli whose stop lasted 4.6 seconds.

Now on fresh soft tires, Piastri began to hunt down the second Mercedes driver. His time came on lap 60 as he closed in on Russell on the start-finish straight and overtook him in Turn 1, using DRS. Unfortunately, P5 was not enough for him to keep his lead in the world championship.

“That was a difficult race, said Piastri. It felt like we had very good pace; it was just incredibly difficult to use it with the DRS train and getting stuck in dirty air, which was a shame.” Nevertheless, he still saw some things that were positive in Mexico: “We did make some progress, and I learned a lot as well. We’ll take those positives into Brazil.”