What happened in Mexican Grand Prix FP2

Max Verstappen set a dominant pace for Red Bull in the second Friday practice session at Formula 1’s Mexican Grand Prix.

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Key moments

– Verstappen 0.424s clear of the field
– Hamilton has messy session including lap deletion and Turn 1 excursion
– Ricciardo and Russell both sidelined with gearbox problems

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Though Mercedes had had the edge in the morning session, Verstappen was in control of practice two throughout.

His early 1m18.206s then 1m17.920s laps were the benchmarks on medium tyres and out of reach for most on soft tyres too.

Lewis Hamilton had a few seconds on top by virtue of putting in his first flying lap on softs earlier, before Verstappen’s 1m17.301s effort put him half a second clear of his title rival.

Valtteri Bottas improved on a second soft-tyre run to take second from his Mercedes team-mate.

Both Mercedes had gone over the grass at Turn 1 in near-identical errors in the early running. Hamilton’s began with a huge lock-up, and that coupled with a lap deletion due to double waved yellow flags being out meant he didn’t set any kind of representative lap time in the first half of the session.

Home hero Sergio Perez was nine tenths of a second away from Red Bull team-mate Verstappen on their first soft-tyre runs but did reduce that to 0.570s at the second attempt as he slotted in behind the two Mercedes.

The Ferraris and AlphaTauris occupied positions five to eighth, led by Carlos Sainz, with Sebastian Vettel’s Aston Martin and Fernando Alonso’s Alpine completing the top 10.

McLaren had a tough session. Lando Norris was only 12th fastest and his team-mate Daniel Ricciardo was stranded in the garage with a gearbox issue after just seven laps of running. He was 15th.

George Russell also had gearbox trouble and managed even less running, with the problems striking his Williams on its out-lap. He made it back to the garage but his day was over.

Recalculating route ⚠️↩️#MexicoGP 🇲🇽 #F1 pic.twitter.com/l2kITMNgef

— Formula 1 (@F1) November 5, 2021

His team-mate Nicholas Latifi had a late miscue when he lost control in the stadium section before managing to skid to a halt just in front of the barriers.

Practice 2 Results