George Russell will miss Free Practice 1 at the Mexico City Grand Prix, as team-mate Kimi Antonelli is on the cusp of the title.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
For the first time in 2026, Russell will step out of the W17 for one of the two mandatory sessions he must give to a young driver – with Mercedes reserve Fred Vesti stepping into Russell’s cockpit at the Aut\u00f3dromo Hermanos Rodr\u00edguez.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Antonelli had missed FP1 at the Barcelona-Catalunya and Hungarian Grands Prix earlier in the season to fulfil his two slots in favour of Vesti with Russell now required to miss one more session this year.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Mexico, owing to the dusty track conditions found in FP1, is a common place for drivers to miss one of their sessions and hand over to the younger driver before returning for FP2.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Russell must win the grand prix this weekend to have any hopes of beating Antonelli to the title, with the Italian holding a 123-point lead over the Briton, with 125 points remaining.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
If Russell does not win, Antonelli will win the title by default, with Antonelli requiring a ninth-place finish if Russell does claim victory.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Lewis Hamilton also remains in contention, and if he also does not win, Antonelli is champion – with a 10th place sufficing should the seven-time champion win the race.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Vesti is not the only FP1 driver confirmed for Mexico thus far, with Aston Martin giving Jak Crawford a latest run-out, whilst Audi is to hand protege Freddie Slater his F1 weekend debut with his first FP1.\u00a0\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"George Russell will miss Free Practice 1 at the Mexico City Grand Prix, as team-mate Kimi Antonelli is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":942773,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,827,830,828,831,829,826,813,823,825,806,805,824,803,804,822,85],"class_list":["post-942772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-daniel-ricciardo","tag-f1-calendar","tag-f1-live","tag-f1-results","tag-f1-standings","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-max-verstappen","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motorsport","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-racing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/942772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=942772"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/942772\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/942773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=942772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=942772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=942772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}