As title. Is it faster for inplace sorting, or simply the
implementation of list.sort() was done before the implementation of
timsort?
As you already know, timsort is pretty close to merge sort.
Timsort added the innovation of making mergesort in-place, plus a little (though already common) O(*n^2) sorting for small sublists.
I've got a comparison of sort algorithms in both Cython and Pure Python (your choice) at:
...including a version of timsort that is in Cython or Pure Python.
HTH.