post-image

MEXICO CITY GP – Carlos Sainz two-tenths ahead of Oscar Piastri in second practice

Testing & Race Reports

Carlos Sainz was fastest in second practice for this weekends Mexico City Grand Prix, the Ferrari driver set a 17.699, putting himself just under two-tenths faster than Oscar Piastri. Sainz set his fastest time on the midway through the session but it’s tricky to gauge the true picture as Pirelli used some of the session for tyre testing.

Yuki Tsunoda put his RB third just a thousandth behind the McLaren and nearly a hundredth ahead of the Ferrari of Charles Leclerc with Lando Norris going six hundredths further behind. But the times at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodrigeuz were again tight with a quarter of a second covering the top five.

Norris’s best lap saw him improve by half a second on the medium tyre which allowed him to jump from ninth to fourth. The Englishman goes into the weekend fifty-seven points behind with five Grands Prix and two sprints remaining. While Leclerc jumped into fourth following a late run on the 2025 C5 tyres.

But the saga around Norris’s penalty for overtaking Max Verstappen off track in Austin continued, with the stewards rejecting the protest by McLaren to overturn the five-second time penalty. The Dutchman had suffered an power unit issue but suggested there would be no penalty for a change.

He said, “No, we will be alright. From the engine side, we are checking. I don’t know what it is. From my side, a useless day. I did four or five laps. Not much to read into at the moment.”

Kevin Magnussen put his Haas sixth four hundredths ahead of the Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton, with his former teammate Valtteri Bottas seven hundredths behind. Despite topping FP1 Hamilton’s teammate George Russell’s afternoon ended early on, after he lost control as he went too high on the kerb at high speed and slammed into the wall at Turn Eight. This caused a lengthy delay in recovering his car and repair the barriers, as the Englishman was checked over in the medical centre.

He told reporters, “I don’t really know what happened. The car just started bouncing in the ground and before I even had the chance to catch it, it was already spinning. A lot of work for the guys tonight again, it just seems like it is one thing after another at the moment.”

After a short burst of performance running post-red flag, as per Pirelli’s test requirement, the drivers were then switched to the high-fuel running of ten laps on each compound they had been given to run (the same through four runs overall at both 20kg and 100kg fuel loads) for the session.

Sergio Perez put his Red Bull ninth going just over a tenth and a half behind Bottas and ahead of Liam Lawson by two hundredths, as they completed the top ten. Fernando Alonso missing out on the top ten by two hundredths as the Aston Martin driver prepares to start his four hundredth Grand Prix.

Nico Hulkenberg put his Haas twelfth going four hundredths behind Alonso and ahead of Esteban Ocon by three hundredths. Lance Stroll was fourteenth nearly two hundredths ahead of Franco Colapinto, but the Argentine’s teammate Alex Albon failed to make it back out. In FP1, Albon had caused extensive damage to his car after a collision with Ollie Bearman at Turn Nine.

Pierre Gasly was sixteenth almost four hundredths ahead of Guanyu Zhou, Russell and Verstappen.

Related

Tags:
, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,