George Russell fastest in Mexican GP practice for Mercedes

Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz was fastest in FP1 before Russell topped FP2, which doubled as a 2023 Pirelli prototype tyre test and so was unrepresentative in the main.

But Russell set the time on 2022-spec soft tyres, as he didn’t run in FP1, so it was a competitively legitimate lap.

Mexican Grand Prix FP1 results: Sainz fastest from Leclerc

What happened in Mexican GP Free Practice 1?

Two-time champion Max Verstappen set the early pace at 1m23.292s on hard tyres, six tenths clear of Red Bull stablemate, and local hero, Sergio Perez.

Verstappen lowered that to 1m22.779s before Perez briefly nicked P1 off him with 1m22.702s to the home crowd’s delight. Verstappen then worked down to 1m22.291s, 0.382s ahead of Perez. 

Sainz was best of the rest for Ferrari on the hards, half a second off, while teammate Charles Leclerc was first to run on softs. Leclerc duly leapt to the top with 1m21.546s, and then improved to 1m20.753s on his second push lap.

Verstappen was on course to beat Leclerc when he spun at the Esses, while Sainz did manage to pip his teammate with 1m20.707s, the fastest time of the session. Perez and Verstappen set exactly the same laptime on softs, 0.12s off the pace, with the Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton in fifth, a further 0.02s in arrears, with another 0.05s back to Fernando Alonso’s Alpine. 

There were plenty of incidents: On a dusty track early on, Williams’ FP1 rookie Logan Sargeant ran wide on the entry to the Foro Sol stadium section, while Alonso also briefly went off track in the Esses.  

The session was red flagged with 22 minutes remaining when Pietro Fittipaldi’s Haas ground to a smoky halt at Turn 2 on an out lap. Meantime, Zhou Guanyu’s Alfa Romeo needed retrieving from the end of the pit lane when his gearbox failed to upshift.

Of the FP1 rookies, AlphaTauri’s Liam Lawson was fastest in 16^th but had a moment and visited the escape road at Ese del Lago. In the closing minutes of the session he caused a red flag when his car suffered a technical failure and, as he didn’t have time to cool the brakes, the front-left corner caught fire.

Sargeant was 17^th, ahead of Nyck de Vries in his final outing for Mercedes. Jack Doohan (Alpine) hit engine trouble on his way to 19^th, with Fittipaldi only managing nine laps before his day also ended early. 

Mexican Grand Prix FP2 results: Russell fastest from Tsunoda

What happened in Mexican GP Free Practice 2?

As in Austin last weekend, FP2 was a…