F1: Verstappen strikes back in Practice 2

Before an absolutely packed grandstands on a Friday at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriquez, Mexico, F1 points leader Max Verstappen, after trailing the two Mercedes in Practice 1, handily beat the Mercedes duo of Valtteri Bottas and Lewis Hamilton in the 2nd practice for the Mexican GP.

Verstappen’s lap of 1m17.301s in his #33 Red Bull Honda beat Bottas by 0.424s and Hamilton by 0.509s.

“It was quite a good day for us as a Team, of course we are always trying to improve and make the car better but overall, it’s looking pretty good,” said Verstappen.

“The track was very dirty in FP1 which made it quite difficult for us but FP2 was much better. It’s always difficult to know how we are going to perform in qualifying after Friday practice, and there are quite a few things to look at to improve performance. It’s been a positive start and we have a good feeling as a Team heading into the weekend.”

Verstappen’s Red Bull teammate and Mexico hero, Sergio Perez, was 4th quick 0.570s back.

“I think we didn’t lose that much progress today, despite the shunt in FP1,” said Perez. “It was a shame we damaged the car and we gave a little bit of extra work to the boys in the garage but other than that incident it was a positive day.

“I am feeling more comfortable on the long runs than over one lap, so I think there is still the potential to improve the car on the short runs. I have one more session to work on them and my target is to be on that front row tomorrow. The margins are going to be very close in qualifying to the Mercedes but hopefully we can lock out that front row.

“I don’t think it has been a representative day in terms of predicting qualifying, tomorrow everything will be even closer, and it will be interesting to see how we all line up. The fans have been incredible already, it is great to look around and have so much support here, everyone is being so enthusiastic and is pushing me to go faster. Every time I stop the car, I can hear the crowd and it’s only Friday!”

“It was a tricky start to the day with low-grip conditions and the dusty track,” said Bottas “This made it hard to get a proper read on the car but, nevertheless, it felt, not too far off how it should be, and that mean we could fine-tune things for FP2. This afternoon, the car felt okay but there’s still time we need to find because Red Bull look quick. They seem faster than us right now, and they showed strong pace on the Soft tire on a single lap, so we need to find more time if we want to fight for pole.”

“The car’s generally feeling okay and we’ve not had any major issues today – we’re giving it everything we’ve got and Red Bull are just a bit quicker than us right now,” said a sandbagging Hamilton.

“We’ve been chipping away at the set-up and trying to improve it, but you can see we are lacking a bit of overall downforce here and that shows in the lap times. It was great to see lots of people came out today, and I’m looking forward to continuing the battle this weekend.”

Those two teams have a clear gap to the chasing pack here in Mexico.

Carlos Sainz Jr rounded out the top-5 in his #55 Ferrari 1.017s off the pace. Pierre Gasly, 5th in the first session, dropped to 6th in Practice 2.

In the final moments Charles Leclerc pulled into the pit lane as he complained about struggling with some engine issues. But the Ferrari team didn’t seem overly concerned, sending him straight back out on track.

George Russell never turned a lap in the session that Dave Robson, Head of Vehicle Performance for Williams addressed:

“We’ve had some issues today that hampered the program, especially in FP2. We found an issue with George’s gearbox at the end of FP1 and so we opted to fit his race box for FP2. Unfortunately, this suffered with a different failure during the first run of FP2. We reduced the running on Nicholas’s car whilst we understood the problem and confirmed that he wouldn’t suffer the same issue. George will now take a new gearbox, which will leave him with a grid penalty on Sunday. This is frustrating, but at least it happened today rather than during the race.

“The car is behaving as we expected, with the low downforce dominating and making the tire management difficult. However, we have completed some useful testing today despite the shortened running and we are confident that we can get the most out of the car over the next couple of days.

“Obviously, George has some catching up to do having lost FP2, but with the car working reasonably well and his previous knowledge of this track, he will do this quickly tomorrow.”

Practice 2 Times