Friday Team Quotes

McLaren Formula 1 Team

Lando Norris (4th, 1:17.643): "Having missed FP1, it was good to get into the car and quickly find the rhythm in FP2. We’re maybe a little bit off the pace from a one-lap perspective at the moment, but we’ll try and find something overnight and see what we can do to compete for Pole."

Oscar Piastri (12th, 1:18.232): "An okay day, but just a messy FP2. There are some things we can pretty easily tidy up, so I'm confident we can dial it all in tomorrow and have a good Quali."

Pato O'Ward: "Being back on track in Mexico is so special to me. All week, the fans have been passionate and loud, making me feel right at home again. I want to thank the team for putting me in the seat. We ran through the programme we had planned for the day successfully, and I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to support Lando and Oscar on their championship runs with time in the car today. I’m excited to see the team finish up the weekend strong."

Andrea Stella, Team Principal: "We finish our first day on track in Mexico with solid running across two smooth sessions. We come away with lots of important information, and the initial readings from FP2 have our long run pace looking reasonably competitive, which is pleasing. Thank you to Pato who did a good job in place of Lando in FP1. He provided a valuable contribution to our data collection, which is appreciated by the team. We will now use today’s learnings to optimise the car to exploit its full potential for tomorrow’s Qualifying session."

Scuderia Ferrari HP

Charles Leclerc (2nd, 1:17.545): "I was so happy to see Antonio by my side this morning. We grew up together in the Scuderia Ferrari Driver Academy and to share the garage with him was very special. We've been teammates in junior categories before and have great memories together, both on and off the track. To have him in the car during FP1, running different tests and collecting data is valuable for us given his work in the simulator throughout the year. I hope he enjoyed it. We put in some solid laps and I had a good feeling in the car today. Our competitors are strong, so for now it’s not realistic to think we can be ahead of them tomorrow. We will build on our work from today and push to make some improvements to close the gap ahead of qualifying."

Lewis Hamilton (5th, 1:17.692): "I think Antonio did a great job this morning. We took away some valuable learnings from his running, which I really appreciate, and it was great to watch him in the car during FP1. FP2 was a bit more challenging on the single lap as the pace didn’t feel strong, but our long-run pace looked more consistent. There’s still performance to unlock, and we’ll be doing our best to get into a stronger position for FP3 and qualifying."

Antonio Fuoco: "It’s been a really special day for me. As an Italian, to get behind the wheel of a Ferrari 16 years on from when Giancarlo Fisichella last drove, is something of which I’m very proud. From the bottom of my heart, I want to thank the entire team for giving me this opportunity. I enjoyed every single lap, every moment. Apart from the emotions, it was an important day for me and I think it was for the team too: I wasn’t on track chasing lap time, I was there to gather as much data as possible and to get a good reference point for the work in the simulator. Huge thanks to all the guys and girls in the team for their support and enthusiasm. I’m sure I’ll never forget this day in Mexico."

Oracle Red Bull Racing

Max Verstappen (1st, 1:17.392): “Of course, it was a long wait to get in the car this Friday. Arvid did well today and thanks to him for looking after my car. On the Soft tyre we managed to get in a good lap, but the rest wasn’t great. The Medium laps weren’t good and the big problem is the long runs where we seem to struggle a lot, which is a concern for the race. The balance isn’t off but there is no grip, which is the main concern. As soon as you go on to a sustainable run the car goes hot and we end up nowhere, which is tough. You can be fast on one lap but will not have pace in the race and of course I would prefer to be fast in the race. It’s going to be tough so we need to take a look and analyse.”

Yuki Tsunoda (7th, 1:17.883): “I can be fairly happy with this Friday, it's been a while since I've had an FP1 and FP2 feel so consistent throughout, so I'm pretty happy overall. There is, of course, stuff we can improve on in both the long and short runs but we're in a good place for Saturday and feel in a better position than we have been on Fridays before. Tomorrow there are things we'll look to optimise in order to find greater performance, but generally the balance was okay. We did, however, struggle with a few things but you can expect that around here. If we can find a compromise between those then we can definitely increase the strengths of the car for Qualifying and Sunday."

Arvid Lindblad: “I think today was pretty good. It wasn’t easy and at the start it was quite dusty and a bit icy on the Hard tyres. I tried to limit the mistakes and I’m happy that the car was back in one piece! I think from my side it was good and I was just trying to give good feedback to the Team. We were trying a few things with the set up and the run plan wasn’t too different to Yuki's. We went on the Soft tyres at the same time and I just did an extra run on them as it was a bit messy with the yellow flags. Today I was a bit more nervous, especially with the weight of the situation and Max fighting for the Championship, so it was important not to make any mistakes. However, as soon as the visor went down and I got going, it was all good. The car is fast but I always feel like I could have done better. Overall, I was happy with the session. I knew it was important to help the Team gather data so I made sure I was giving good feedback to point them in the right direction and I felt like I did a good job of that. It was a pleasure to drive Max’s car and hopefully he will have a good weekend.”

Gianpiero Lambiase, Head of Racing: “Arvid did a very solid job in the car in FP1, we had some new components on the car and he did a very good job of collecting the data we needed and keeping the car in one piece. Onto the afternoon, a track temperature of just under 50 degrees is making life very difficult for us, both on the PU and brake cooling and the tyres as well. The challenge we are working on at the moment, is really trying to find that combination of tyre inner and surface temperature. Certainly in FP2 we saw that the long runs are becoming more and more of a focus for us. I think over one lap both cars are able to put in quite a competitive lap time, as you saw in FP2, particularly with Max. So, it's the high fuel run pace where we are really having to focus all of our attention this evening. We feel we are not really in a happy place with our tyre degradation and thermal control of the tyre. We need to work to get that where we need and want it to be."

Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team

Andrea Kimi Antonelli (3rd, 1:17.566): "That was a decent Friday. It's probably one of the best first days on track I've had in a long time. I felt comfortable in the car immediately and was able to get straight on the pace. FP1 was slightly better than FP2; we tried some changes in between the sessions. Some of those changes helped improve the car, others maybe set us back a little bit. We now have the time to work through the data this evening and decide what to keep and what to go back on ahead of FP3. I'm looking forward to tomorrow and the rest of the weekend. Our pace looks good in both low and high fuel, but we know the track will continue to improve. It is going to be important to evolve with that, both in my driving and with the car. We will do our best and hopefully can have two more positive days here in Mexico City following our running today."

George Russell (6th, 1:17.829): "As an F1 driver, you rarely get the chance to go into the grandstands and see the cars on track... as you are usually in the car driving! I took the chance with Fred in the car for FP1 to do just that though and go experience it for myself. It was very enjoyable; it was also good to be able to watch on as Fred did a great job in my place and put us in a strong position to head into FP2. After getting back in the car for the second session, we can say that the competitive order looks very close once again. It is a short track, so the margins are going to be small between the whole field. We looked solid on single lap pace, and we know how important qualifying has proved recently in securing a good result on Sunday. All eyes are on that for tomorrow and we will see what we can do. It is certainly going to be close between the top eight cars by the looks of today."

Fred Vesti: "It was great to be back in the W16 on the track today. I've spent thousands of hours working with the team at Brackley in the simulator to help develop the car alongside George, Kimi, and Valtteri. To get my second experience behind-the-wheel, having driven FP1 in Bahrain, was brilliant. These sessions are so important to help bring additional knowledge to our work at the factories so we can continually improve our correlation. The hour on track itself was solid. My laps were consistent and, as a team, we were able to complete our full programme. You always want more laps and to put the fastest possible time on the board, but I got out of the car really happy and satisfied with the job that I did. I'm looking forward to helping the team over the rest of the season now, using what I gained today, as we battle for second in the Constructors' Championship."

Andrew Shovlin, Trackside Engineering Director: "The track is always low grip to start Friday practice here, which explains why nine of the 10 teams opted to run a young driver in the first session. For those reasons, George also elected to watch from the sidelines whilst Fred did an excellent job of executing the programme in his car. He finished the session as third fastest rookie but spent the back end of the hour focused on long run work for us on high fuel; he was only bettered by drivers that stayed at low fuel throughout. As a mainstay of our development programme on the simulator, it's been very useful to give Fred a bit of mileage in the real W16. On Kimi's side it was encouraging to see him hit the ground running. The car was working reasonably well and he looked very solid on the single lap and long run. George returned for FP2 and, as most drivers did, didn't find the low grip conditions particularly pleasant but still looked to have competitive pace on the single lap and long run. Kimi, with an hour's running under his belt already, was also strong relative to our competitors and will be looking forward to carrying that form into the rest of the weekend. As the track continues to evolve, we will need to react accordingly but today has been a solid start to our time in Mexico City."

Aston Martin Aramco F1 Team

Fernando Alonso (8th, 1:17.938):

Lance Stroll (10th, 1:17.954):

BWT Alpine F1 Team

Franco Colapinto (18th, 1:18.721): “It's always good to be back in this part of the world and driving at this very unique circuit. Personally, it felt like a decent Friday where I was up to speed quite quickly. I think we have a bit of performance to find especially with some of the kerbs and bumps at this track where the car felt quite unstable. I felt good on the long run at the end of Free Practice 2 so hopefully that gives us something to work towards with an eye on Sunday. A lot to analyse, as normal for a Friday, and a few things for us to improve as a team.”

Pierre Gasly (20th, 1:19.194): “Today, I sat out of Free Practice 1, with Paul in my car for the session. He did a good job in running to the programme with some useful set-up work to give us some data to work with. On my side, once I was back in the car for the second session, it was very difficult and probably one of the toughest sessions of the season. For some reason, I just struggled with the car. It was quite difficult across the board – the car felt different to normal - and the grip levels just felt very low. So, not an ideal start to the weekend and I am sure we will come together and aim to do better tomorrow when it counts.”

Paul Aron: “First of all, a massive thank you to the team for giving me the opportunity to drive in Free Practice 1. Mexico City is a tough track, especially with the high altitude so it was cool to experience the car in those conditions. The grip was quite low so I had to build up my confidence lap by lap. Traffic was quite difficult, which impacted my laps, but that was to be expected on such a short track and with a lot of rookie drivers in the session. That said, the objective of the session was to help the team, run through some set-up items and give good feedback. In the end, a successful session and very useful for my development. Now, I will aim to help the team in any way possible for the remainder of the weekend.”

MoneyGram Haas F1 Team

Esteban Ocon (13th, 1:18.266): “It’s been an interesting day. We’ve learned quite a lot about the car and tried a lot of things which have been quite positive, so I’m satisfied overall. We now just need to make the right choices for the rest of the weekend, in terms of strategy, and go into qualifying with good confidence. The update has definitely gone in the right direction and the team has done a really good job improving the balance of the car.”

Oliver Bearman (17th, 1:18.442): “It’s tough to miss out on FP1 and lose that rhythm that you build, but overall, I think FP2 was decent. Particularly in the long run, I felt like I’d made some progress, although I need to work on the short run. I’m happy with the day, I think we’ve made some good steps with the car since how it felt the last time I drove it here in 2023, so that’s positive and hopefully we’re going to have a good weekend. The update is doing what we expected, and I’m glad now that we have a few more sessions to play with it, we can make some changes overnight to optimize it tomorrow for FP3.”

Ryō Hirakawa: “As always, I’d like to thank both MoneyGram Haas F1 Team and TOYOTA GAZOO Racing for this opportunity. I’d say it was a hectic session as it’s quite a short circuit for 20 cars, so it was tricky to manage the traffic. It was also my first time driving around the Autodromo Hermanos Rodríguez, so there was a bit of everything for me today – exploring the track with a lot of cars, managing traffic and tires, it was very busy. We completed the run plan with no issues though, so I’m happy with that. I know which way the team wants to head, and I’m very much aligned with that, so everything is working well, I can't wait to get to Abu Dhabi where I'm driving once again."

Ayao Komatsu, Team Principal: “I think it was a solid Friday. We had Ryō (Hirakawa) back in the car for FP1 and here in Mexico it’s always a tricky one as the grip level is so low to start, but he was building up well and found speed every lap. Ollie jumped in again for FP2 and established the baseline pretty quickly. He learned a lot on his high fuel run, so I’m confident we can find another step for FP3. Esteban had a good solid pair of sessions. There are few key areas to work on for tomorrow which is good. Overall, a solid Friday – something we can build up from for FP3 and qualifying tomorrow.”

Visa Cash App Racing Bulls F1 Team

Liam Lawson (11th, 1:18.218): “The track is really tricky to drive as it's high altitude, slippery and has low grip. That being said, the car is in a decent place. Around half of the grid missed FP1 as the young drivers were on track, so many of us are in a similar position. FP3 is going to be important and the track surface itself should get better before Qualifying, so the aim is to ensure we have the best car package for then.”

Isack Hadjar (14th, 1:18.281): “It was a tough Friday for us today. Looking at our FP programme, I think we made the right choices in terms of tyres keeping some new Softs for tomorrow, so hopefully that will play an important role. This is a very low downforce track, the midfield is tight and it seems like we’re lacking a couple of tenths from the guys ahead of us when it comes to short runs. We’ll regroup together to analyze everything with the team tonight and get some work done ahead of tomorrow."

Ayumu Iwasa: “It was good to feel the difference between the car and the simulator, so today’s experience should be useful for my future with the sim work. Hopefully I’ll get another opportunity to jump in the car again and do even better. We had a strong programme and set up today and I had a good amount of mileage throughout the session, making it a good run for me and for the team. It was quite tricky with the traffic, as usual at this track and today was my first time driving here and this year’s car, so it was a new experience, but the team gave me a lot of guidance. In terms of what I’ve been doing with the simulator and the team, it was all helpful for today’s session. It was good to feel the difference between the car and the simulator, so today’s experience should be useful for my future with the sim work. Hopefully I’ll get another opportunity to jump in the car again and do even better."

Mattia Spini, Chief Race Engineer: “The Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez is known for its high track evolution and today was no exception. We saw significant lap time improvements throughout FP1 and further gains in FP2 as the circuit continued to rubber in. Mexico is also a popular venue for giving young drivers track time, and this year was no different, with nine rookies taking part in FP1, including our reserve driver Ayumu, who ran for us today. He delivered a clean session, completed the planned programme, and provided valuable feedback that will contribute to our weekend preparation. Isack ran two sets of Medium tyres in FP1, while most of the field opted for the Soft compound. Although he didn’t quite piece together his best sectors, his underlying pace was encouraging. We made considerable setup changes ahead of FP2 in the search for additional performance and gave Liam more laps to get up to speed after sitting out FP1. Although neither driver managed to complete a fully clean lap, there is still some performance to be found if tomorrow we want to be with the top runners, and this will be our focus tonight.”

Williams Racing

Carlos Sainz (9th, 1:17.939): "I’m relatively happy with the car, especially considering I missed FP1. There’s some setup work that needs to be done going into FP3 tomorrow but overall, it was a positive session. For tomorrow, I think Q3 should be our target, but to achieve it we will need to execute a perfect qualifying. Let’s see if we can find some performance overnight and keep improving step by step."

Alexander Albon (19th, 1:18.855): "A tricky Friday where we struggled a bit with the setup. The track is also super slippery out there, so it took a while to get up to speed and get some proper laps in. We’ve got some work to do overnight and we will analyse everything as a team. If we can get on top of a few things for tomorrow, I think we’ll be in a better spot for qualifying."

Luke Browning: "A really enjoyable day being back out in the FW47! It’s a new track for me, so I’ve been learning the circuit lap by lap and making the most of the time out there. The pace looked strong on the hard tyre where we were quickest of the rookies. The medium tyre wasn’t as strong and unfortunately, we didn’t get a run on the soft tyre, but the long runs looked good which should bode well for Sunday. My main focus now is on the final two rounds of Formula 2 and hopefully securing the championship in Abu Dhabi."

Stake F1 Team Kick Sauber

Gabriel Bortoleto (15th, 1:18.323): “It was my first time racing here in Mexico, and I have to say the conditions were quite different from what I’m used to – very low grip, especially early in the session. Overall, however, it felt okay: I enjoyed the challenge, and the atmosphere was great. In FP2, I struggled a bit to get a proper lap in on the soft tyres. When I finally did, the tyres were already past their peak, so the lap didn’t reflect our full potential. Still, we gathered good information about the car and the balance, which is what matters most at this stage. I’m excited to keep building from here – it's a cool place to race and I’m looking forward to the rest of the weekend.”

Nico Hulkenberg (16th, 1:18.348): “It was a regular Friday for us. FP1 went smoothly while FP2 wasn’t quite as clean, so there’s still a bit more performance to unlock but, overall, it’s been a decent day. Now it’s all about the usual Friday night work, analysing, optimising and fine-tuning the setup. Once again, it looks like a very close fight out there, but I believe we can battle for a spot around the top 10 in qualifying tomorrow.”