Friday Report - Sainz shows Ferrari competitive

Carlos Sainz
© Ferrari

Carlos Sainz continued to show Ferrari has a very competitive car for the Mexican Grand Prix track, the Spanish driver setting the fastest time in FP2, despite being handed the hardest compounds Pirelli made available for this session, with the 90 minutes entirely dedicated and controlled by Pirelli.

A massive crash by George Russell, 12 minutes into the session, cut the running time by 22 minutes, while Verstappen’s difficult day continued, the Red Bull driver being unable to complete a single flying lap due to a Power Unit issue that terminated his running as soon as practice resumed after that lengthy red flag.

The goal of this extended session being to allow Pirelli to compare this year’s tyres with the 2025-spec ones that have just been homologated, the Italian manufacturer split the workload between the teams. Mercedes, Ferrari, Alpine and Haas were charged of comparing the C4 compounds, Red Bull, McLaren and Sauber ran with the 2024 and 2025 C5 compounds, while Aston Martin, Williams and VCARB had one set of 2024 C5 compounds and one set of the new C6 compounds that will make their debut next year.

All drivers had to do one performance run on each set and one long run on the two sets as well, and that’s why the final number of laps for the session was pre-determined by which compounds they were running, the softer compounds couldn’t do as many laps on high fuel loads than the harder ones. The five drivers who missed out on FP2 did a very short run on the Medium tyres, but only Norris and Alonso improved on the lap times they had done before.

Russell’s heavy crash was one of the two main stories of the session. The Mercedes driver was marginally wide in Turn 8, kept his foot down and ran over the outside kerbs on Turn 9 and with the car bottoming up, lost control of the W15 as he entered Turn 10, crashing heavily into the outside wall, Russell got out of the car unaided but was taken to the medical center for checks, being cleared soon afterwards.

As his car was already running with the old aerodynamic package, Mercedes has plenty of spare parts for the car, but there’s now a question mark about the condition of the PU and the gearbox, as the impact against the barrier was quite heavy.

For Max Verstappen the session was a disaster. The Dutch driver complained of a strange engine noise right from his first out lap, stopped for checks just before the red flag and then went out again, to find exactly the same issue, being told to pit immediately. The floor came off the RB20 quickly and the mechanics set about replacing the Power Unit, but given it was an old unit the Dutch shouldn’t get any grid penalty for Sunday.

McLaren seems to have mase a small step forward with the upgraded floor, as Piastri was second quickest, but running a softer compound than Sainz. Yuki Tsunoda shone as he made the best out of the new C6 prototype compounds to set the third quickest time, with team mate Liam Lawson continuing to struggle to match his pace. The New Zealander was 8th quickest but nearly 0.7s slower than his team mate.

Kevin Magnussen, in 5th place, and Valtteri Bottas, in P8, made the most of the slippery track conditions, as there’s still a lot of dust in the racing line, while Hamilton, using the new Mercedes aerodynamic package was only 7th quickest, almost 0.6s behind Sainz, and Pérez continued to disappoint his fans, being 9th quickest, 0.7s behind the fastest time of the day.