Red Bull set the pace once more on the first day of the Mexico City Grand Prix as World Champion Max Verstappen and his rookie stand-in both caught the eye in the two free practice sessions at the Aut\u00f3dromo Hermanos Rodriguez, where 101,327 people gathered this Friday.<\/p>\n
Friday \u2013 the long and short of it<\/p>\n
\u201cThe performance of the car has been better, and we need to keep the momentum going,\u201d said Max Verstappen after winning in Texas \u2013 and he did just that with the top time in the second practice hour at AHR on Friday. The five-time Mexican Grand Prix winner clocked 1 minute 17.392 seconds, at an average of 200.206 km\/h, to lead Ferrari\u2019s Charles Leclerc by a tenth-and-a-half and the Mercedes of Kimi Antonelli by 0.174s.<\/p>\n
In a session typically split between one-lap performance and long-run race pace, the bad news for everyone else is that Verstappen was not entirely thrilled. \u201cOn the short run on Softs we managed to do a good lap, everything else was bad,\u201d said the 28-year-old Dutchman. \u201cThe Medium short run was not good, but the big problem is the long runs, where we seemed to struggle a lot, so that is of course a big problem for the race. It\u2019s a tough one to sort.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Not an Oscar-winning performance?<\/p>\n
The other big question from a quiet session: what\u2019s going on at McLaren? Lando Norris was fourth-fastest, a quarter of a second behind Verstappen, but the real worry is Championship leader Oscar Piastri. The 24-year-old Australian driver could manage only 12th-fastest, comprehensively outpaced again by both Verstappen and his own teammate. Norris finished fourth and voiced some concern: \u201cNormally we\u2019re ahead on a Friday and everybody catches up on Saturday,\u201d he admitted, \u201cbut we\u2019re already a little bit behind.\u201d<\/p>\n
Piastri, four races without a win, remained calm despite his lowly finish: \u201cIt was an average lap on the Soft tires,\u201d he acknowledged, \u201cso I\u2019m not surprised at the lap time, but overall it felt reasonable. There are plenty of things we\u2019ve found: they\u2019re all small things, but when you put them all together they\u2019re not. It\u2019s going to be tight, as always.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ferraris fast, Mercedes moderately happy<\/p>\n
Ferrari carried their pace from Austin into the Mexico weekend as Charles Leclerc clocked the second-fastest time of FP2, with Lewis Hamilton fifth and just three-tenths off the Red Bull\u2019s pace. But Leclerc, who has finished third in the last two Mexican races, was realistic: \u201cIt was okay,\u201d he said to his pit crew, \u201cbut I suppose the McLarens are on another planet?\u201d He has the star of the moment, Verstappen, to worry about as well as the papaya cars as Ferrari \u2013 winners here last year \u2013 pursue a first race win of 2025. Mercedes, meanwhile, had George Russell in sixth spot but complaining about his car\u2019s handling, while Kimi Antonelli recovered from a slow start to his day to finish an impressive third as his late-season surge in form continues.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The name\u2019s Lindblad, Arvid Lindblad\u2026<\/p>\n
Leclerc had been fastest in the opening practice hour, but the name on everyone\u2019s lips after that session was Arvid Lindblad. Taking over Verstappen\u2019s Red Bull, the 18-year-old British\/Swedish driver produced a stunning performance by finishing the session in sixth place. Currently racing with Campos in F2, with two wins in that category this year, Lindblad took his chance with both hands, finishing just 0.617 seconds behind Leclerc. Perhaps more significantly, he outpaced regular Red Bull driver Yuki Tsunoda, who ended up in eighth place as he fights to retain his seat for 2026.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think I did a decent lap at the end,\u201d was how Lindblad summed it all up. \u201cI was given the pep talk about not crashing the car, there was even more emphasis on that than usual,\u201d he said as he was given charge of the title-chasing #1 machine. Asked about his chances of a fast-track to F1, he said: \u201cI\u2019m used to getting thrown in at the deep end and trying to figure it out, so I believe I\u2019ll find a way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rookies enjoy their day in the Mexican sun<\/p>\n
Rookies \u2013 drivers who have not taken part in more than two Grands Prix \u2013 are the workhorses of the F1 teams, whose efforts in the simulator and on track prepare the way for the established stars to do their thing. Taking part in a Formula 1 session can be a reward for that endeavor \u2013 or a foundation-stone for the future. No fewer than nine of them were in action in FP1 at the Aut\u00f3dromo on Friday, and Lindblad was far and away the best of them. The other eight occupied the final eight places on the time-sheet, with Mexican favorite Pato O\u2019Ward, running in Lando Norris\u2019s McLaren, in 13th spot \u2013 exactly where he was in the corresponding session in 2024.<\/p>\n
Twenty-year-old Texan Jak Crawford, deputizing for Lance Stroll in the #18 Aston Martin, was 19th-quickest but stressed how much he enjoyed the experience of returning to circuit where he raced in F4 six years ago. \u201cI love the track\u201d, he said, \u201cI love the flow it has and how much you can use the kerbs to try different lines. I like the esses section in particular, I think that\u2019s really cool. Driving through the stadium is also great and one of the most iconic sections of racetrack in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mexico City Grand Prix PR<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Red Bull set the pace once more on the first day of the Mexico City Grand Prix as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":238779,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,582,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-238778","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nascar","11":"tag-racing","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238778\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}