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A fifth of the Formula 1 field was replaced by FP1-only rookies at the Mexican Grand Prix - chief among them was a second chance for Kimi Antonelli to get a clean early 2025 F1 headstart with Mercedes.
Antonelli and fellow FP1 rookies Ollie Bearman (Ferrari), Pato O'Ward (McLaren), Felipe Drugovich (Aston Martin) and Robert Shwartzman (Sauber) were closely observed by The Race's Scott Mitchell-Malm and Edd Straw on Friday in Mexico.
Here's what they found and how the rookies reflected on their chance to shine:
Kimi Antonelli
Kimi Antonelli’s second public F1 outing was a more low-key affair than his much-heralded debut in Italy, and that's exactly how he and Mercedes wanted it. As he put it “I drove much calmer today”.
The 18-year-old took over Lewis Hamilton’s car and ticked the main box that he failed to do at Monza by not crashing. There was a brief scare when he ran over some debris, which brought out an early red flag and gave him some floor damage but that was down to misfortune as he didn't see it. Other than that, it was a reassuringly straightforward session.
“I didn’t want to take any risks, I just wanted a clean session, just to get some laps, understand the car and the tyres a bit more,” said Antonelli. “Overall, it was pretty decent. I could feel I wasn’t on the limit , but just because it was my choice.”
The 18-year-old's focus was on longer runs on the hard tyres early on. After having to abort his first lap for the red flag that was thrown just before he crossed the line, he then returned to the track after the stoppage for a run of three consecutive push laps.
He was visibly feeling his way in on a track he hadn’t driven before, with the feedback over the radio from engineer Pete ‘Bono’ Bonnington indicating that braking for Turn 1 and the speed carried through the sweeps in the middle of the lap were the main opportunities for improvement. That was a running theme for the session.
The second red flag didn’t directly impact him as he’d yet to return to the track, although it did cost him some track time. In total, he banked three runs on the hard tyres, albeit the first curtailed by the red flag. He was also able to work on details not only of his driving as these runs progressed, initially 30mm long when he pulled into the box, then 30mm short, then 10mm short, then bang on.
He headed out on softs for his performance runs with 13 minutes remaining , which gave him the chance for two quick laps. The first was his quickest, a time of 1m19.200s – 1.202s off the pace.
He was told after the first attempt that “the main losses are braking Turn 1 and Turn 4, about a tenth each, then through the high speed 7 through to 11 losing about three to four tenths”. It was later clarified that it was the mid-corner speed at Turn 7 and Turn 10 where he needed to improve.
After a brief roll around after a practice start at the pitexit, he took the chequered flag without completing another push lap before returning to the start/finish straight for a well-executed practice start from the grid.
“I was trying to build the confidence lap by lap and also it was my first time on the track, so I was trying to learn as much as possible,” said Antonelli. “Of course, on the soft the step in grip was quite big, also because on hards I was doing consecutive laps, so I couldn’t really try the single lap work. So I went on the soft and I felt a lot more grip and didn’t really use it as I was really surprised by the amount of grip.”
Comparisons with his team-mate are meaningless given the different specs of the cars, with Russell running the pre-Belgian Grand Prix floor as a result of his Austin qualifying accident. But after his Monza nightmare, this was exactly the FP1 outing Antonelli and Mercedes needed. - Edd Straw
Ollie Bearman
Bearman’s standing in Ferrari has been obvious for a long time and the team’s experienced engineer Jock Clear summed that up ahead of FP1 when he said Ferrari was no longer “mollycoddling” the young driver who already has two F1 race starts under his belt.
He had a proper job to do in Mexico, getting through Charles Leclerc’s usual programme, but he barely had a chance to do any of it thanks to an early red flag then a bizarre crash with Alex Albon.
Bearman’s initial laps were on hards with aero rakes attached, then he stayed on hards after the session’s brief interruption. Consecutive push laps only yielded a 1m21.256s and then he was hit by Albon while on a cooldown lap.
It's quite the impact 😳
— Formula 1 (@F1) October 25, 2024
Albon happens upon Bearman's Ferrari at speed, clips the front left and spins into the wall 💥
Both cars will play no further part in the session.#F1 #MexicoGP pic.twitter.com/rPgYMh7G0w
If there’s any criticism to be made about where Bearman tried to let Albon through then it should be directed at the radio messages from Ferrari as the team’s communication over the radio was a little lacking.
Bearman had let Oscar Piastri past just before the previous straight and all he was told was “next car is Albon”. But wasn’t given a gap and was pretty much at the end of that short straight by the time Albon would have been just about visible in the mirrors exiting the previous corner.
The next message Bearman got after “next car is Albon” was only when Albon was approaching – and he was told “next car is O’Ward”, which again shows a lack of Ferrari sharpness. So, there seemed nothing Bearman could do about where Albon caught him, and in a difficult situation he tried to keep as far out the way as possible.
Unsurprisingly, Bearman sounded absolutely incredulous and baffled about how the clash could have happened. A very soft and helpless “He hit me. He hit me…I’m out” preceded a few more very soft, half-started sentences, and a final “I don’t know what more I could have done” had the air of such genuine perplexion that maybe he even started to wonder if, somehow, he had made a massive error.
The stewards agreed he hadn't. - Scott Mitchell-Malm
PATO O’WARD
IndyCar ace O’Ward was entrusted with Lando Norris’s new car, and the upgraded floor for part of the session. As he explained after a clean session, he was given a simple set of instructions: “Don’t shunt the car, if you try to go too fast I’m going to scream at you and we need information”.
That meant he had to set aside his usual approach, which he characterised as “I find the limit of the car by going over it” to ensure that he produced the necessary information. And he did exactly that, banking 21 laps and ending the session 13th fastest, 1.297s off the pace and 0.337s off team-mate Oscar Piastri.
This outing is as close as O’Ward gets to a home race, hence the enormous reaction from the crowd. And on the third FP1 outing of his career, he did exactly the job McLaren needed him to do. - ES
ROBERT SHWARTZMAN
Shwartzman made his second FP1 appearance of the season, but it’s likely to be remembered primarily for him earning a five-place grid penalty he will never serve for passing Yuki Tsunoda under yellow flags “while travelling at speed”.
Driving Zhou Guanyu’s car, he ended the session 19th in a session that proved frustrating because of the two red flag interruptions that he said compromised the runplan that was inevitably focused on aerodynamic testing.
And a problem when he first attempted to do a quick lap on softs meant that his best laptime, 1.990s off the pace and 0.938s slower than team-mate Valtteri Bottas, wasn’t as quick as it could have been.
“I was a bit disappointed at the end because I had only one lap to put up a laptime and unfortunately we had an issue with the DRS that was not opening,” said Shwartzman.
“I had to abort the lap and try to fix it, but I lost the sequence and tyres and everything so didn’t manage to do a good laptime on paper. Overall, the car felt really good and I have a feeling that potentially we could have done a really nice laptime with it.’ - ES
Felipe Drugovich
A rare chance for Aston Martin reserve driver Drugovich was not as fruitful as the 2022 Formula 2 champion hoped.
He lamented being “still way too far from the limit” at the end of a session in which he was only two tenths slower than regular driver Lance Stroll, and basically a match for him when correcting his laptime to account for traffic in the final sector of his best lap.
Drugovich looked ill at ease with what has been a tricky car this season, and repeatedly had trouble with understeer on both the hards and the soft.
His final flying lap, a second attempt on softs, was also compromised by being in the wrong engine mode for most of the first sector (and also missing the apex of Turn 1 by a mile). “I thought the switch was in the right position but it was stuck in the middle,” Drugovich said.
He was pretty context with his pace in the end, but unsurprisingly his feedback didn’t differ greatly from the team’s race drivers: “All I can say is it's quite a difficult car to drive.
"It’s a car that we call it ‘on and off’. It's pretty difficult to feel the car and actually feel comfortable with it.”
Drugovich is not a fan of these FP1 outings, because he feels they are too limited even though he accepts some track time is better than none.
And this is likely to go down as a decent effort in a session that will, once again, matter little in the career trajectory of a driver who is only getting the bare minimum opportunities in his role. - SMM
