F1 Friday Practice in Mexico City: George Russell fastest, junior drivers, Pirelli tyre test
George Russell was fastest on Friday in Mexico City in two practice sessions featuring junior drivers and the final Pirelli tyre test.
George Russell was fastest on Friday in Mexico City. (LAT Images/Mercedes)
The Mercedes driver set an early time of 1:19.970 in Free Practice 2 before all drviers swapped onto unmarked development Pirelli tyres.
Russell was among the drivers afforded the freedom to complete at least 45 minutes of their own running after giving their car to a junior driver in Free Practice 1.
"Today was one of our better Fridays, if not the best of the year so far," said Russell.
"The car is working well and it felt good driving on this track."
"The pace was relatively strong, but we know the challenges at this circuit. "
Liam Lawson prepares for Free Practice with AlphaTauri. (Getty Images/Red Bull Content Pool)
Liam Lawson was the fastest junior for AlphaTauri, ahead of Logan Sargeant for Williams, Nyck de Vries for Mercedes, Jack Doohan for Alpine, and Pietro Fittipaldi for Haas.
Red Bull teammates Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez set the early times in the first session on hard tyres, before Ferrari took over on the soft tyres.
Carlos Sainz was fastest, setting a lap time of 1:20.707 ahead of teammate Charles Leclerc, with Perez and Verstappen in third and fourth.
There were a series of stoppages as the junior drivers struggled with mechanical issues, with Pietro Fittipaldi and Liam Lawson both stopping on track and Doohan forced to retire to the pits.
Free Practice 2 was extended to 90 minutes to accommodate the extra running, with Pirelli bringing a softer set of experimental compounds to Mexico City than was trialled in Austin last weekend.
Running was stopped 33 minutes into the session when Charles Leclerc spun heavily into the barriers, leading to a 20-minute delay as the barriers were repaired.
Mexico City was host to a Pirelli tyre test on Friday. (Pirelli)
The shortened session meant that teams covered 2397 km on the experimental tyres, less than the 2823 km covered in Austin but enough to take the total running past five thousand kilometres.
Russell set the fastest time of the day as one of the few drivers allowed time to complete his own programme.
"For qualifying, the difficulty will be to get the tyres in the right window for the single lap run," said the Mercedes driver.
"And on Sunday, it will be difficult to manage temperatures for the engine and for the brakes."
"A podium finish should hopefully be possible for us this weekend, so that's what we will be aiming for."
"Not having the normal FP2 running, where we get to assess the long run performance of our rivals, doesn't allow us to understand where our competitors are and that can become a big challenge if we will struggle with tyre temperatures during the race."
As part of the tyre test, teams were limited to using tyre warmers at 50°C ahead of a change to the regulations in 2023.
"We take some very useful learnings about tyre temperature management for next year and will be working hard overnight as it's not going to be a straightforward weekend for sure, but positive learnings for us today," said Russell.
The Mexico City grand prix weekend resumes with the final practice session underway at 4.00am on Sunday (AEST).
