Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc led Mercedes driver Kimi Antonelli in first practice at the Mexico City Grand Prix, where the Italian is poised to clinch his first world title.<\/p>\n
Leclerc was 0.659 seconds quicker than Antonelli, for whom a ninth-place finish will secure the championship regardless of any other results.<\/p>\n
Only a victory by his team-mate George Russell or Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton can theoretically stop Antonelli becoming champion on Sunday. Even then, Antonelli only needs ninth place if Russell wins and 10th if Hamilton does.<\/p>\n
Third quickest in the session was Mercedes reserve Frederik Vesti, driving Russell’s car, ahead of Hamilton.<\/p>\n
Mercedes were one of 10 teams to choose this session to do one of their mandatory rookie sessions. Only Ferrari had both race drivers in their cars.<\/p>\n
Mexico City is chosen by many teams to run their mandatory rookie sessions because the first session is traditionally unrepresentative as a result of the dirty track surface.<\/p>\n
Japanese Ayumu Iwasa, in for Max Verstappen at Red Bull, was fifth fastest, ahead of Alpine’s Pierre Gasly and Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso.<\/p>\n
McLaren’s Oscar Piastri, Haas driver Oliver Bearman and Racing Bulls’ Arvid Lindblad completed the top 10.<\/p>\n
Briton Freddie Slater’s first outing at a grand prix weekend for Audi did not go to plan. <\/p>\n
Problems – including the team sending him out with a cooling fan still blocking the entry to the car’s right-hand sidepod – limited his running to 14 laps – about half a standard mileage. <\/p>\n
But he did manage to get out for the final 20 minutes or so and set the 19th fastest time.<\/p>\n
He was just behind another Briton, Luke Browning having his latest run in the Williams.<\/p>\n
American Colton Herta, who Cadillac are considering promoting to F1 next year in place of Valtteri Bottas, was 22nd.<\/p>\n
Governing body the FIA says Herta, a nine-time winner in Indycar, has now done enough miles to score the 40 points he needs to secure the superlicence required to race in F1.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc led Mercedes driver Kimi Antonelli in first practice at the Mexico City Grand Prix, where…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":819138,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-819137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=819137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819137\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/819138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=819137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=819137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=819137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}