F1: Sainz leads Ferrari 1-2 in Practice 1 for Mexico City GP

Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz Jr. turned a lap of 1m20.707s to top his teammate Charles Leclerc by 0.046s in opening practice for the Mexico City GP.

Fresh from their constructors’ triumph in Austin, Red Bull pair Max Verstappen and local hero Sergio Perez set the early benchmarks on the hard tires – Verstappen three-tenths quicker than his teammate, backing up the notion that there would be no freebies for Perez this weekend in his pursuit of a maiden home win.

However, when the soft tires were bolted on, it was Ferrari who turned the tables on the Red Bull drivers.

Red Bull teammates Sergio Perez and Max Verstappen set identical lap times to finish 3rd and 4th, 0.120s behind the Spaniard.  Verstappen did suffer a harmless spin on the slippery dusty track after clipping a curb, perhaps caught out by the reduced air density at this track that sits 2,250m above sea level.

Lewis Hamilton rounded out the top-5 for Mercedes, 0.142s behind.

There were full five FP1 swap-ins: Pietro Fittipaldi replacing Kevin Magnussen at Haas, Logan Sargeant getting another run for Williams in place of Alex Albon, Jack Doohan making his FP1 debut for Alpine (Esteban Ocon moving aside), Liam Lawson taking Yuki Tsunoda’s AlphaTauri for a run, and Nyck de Vries – set to drive for AlphaTauri next year – in for George Russell at Mercedes.

It wasn’t plain sailing for everyone, with Haas and AlphaTauri both encountering issues. They both saw a car stop out on track, while McLaren had to fix an issue on Ricciardo’s car mid-session, Ocon’s car ran into problems late on and Leclerc lost some running thanks to a puncture.

As for the ‘Friday’ drivers, Fittipaldi missed plenty of running thanks to that MGU-H problem, with only nine laps completed in P20. Doohan also missed some running in P19, De Vries was 18th having not run the soft tire, Sargeant was 17th also on the hard rubber and Lawson wound up 16th.

Next up is practice 2 that will be 90 minutes long instead of 60 so Pirelli and the teams can test 2023 tires.

Practice 1 Results