New rules help Mercedes? Fastest pit stop in Sochi for Bottas

As with every race weekend, Formula 1 presents the DHL Fastest Pit Stop Award after Sochi. Normally, betting agencies would not pay out much if you were to bet on Red Bull Racing's team, but after the newly introduced pit stop rules, the cards have suddenly been dealt very differently.

Mercedes have won both the drivers' and manufacturers' championships year after year. The Brackley based team were so dominant during the hybrid era that it didn't really matter if they managed to complete a pit stop in two or five seconds. This season was different. Mercedes and Red Bull are now so closely matched that every tenth of a second counts. And so Mercedes pleaded for new rules that would make the pitstops slower.

This rule change seems to be having an effect because since the introduction of the new rules Red Bull Racing has made mistakes every single race weekend. No race was completed at Spa, but at Monza, it went wrong for Max Verstappen, and in Sochi, it was Sergio Perez who experienced a very slow pit stop.

And that's why we can call Mercedes the surprising winner of the DHL Fastest Pit Stop Award in Sochi. With a 2.45 second stop, Valtteri Bottas' pit stop was the fastest of the weekend, although it must be said that the second-fastest stop, a 2.46, was in the name of Red Bull Racing. The Austrian team is still proudly in the lead in the overall standings with a 1.88 second stop. Nine of the ten fastest pitstops this season have been made by Max Verstappen's team.