Carlos Sainz ended second apply on the Mexico Metropolis Grand Prix quickest after the session was shortened by a heavy crash by George Russell.
Title chief Max Verstappen additionally his hassle, retiring from the session with a recurring energy unit drawback.
Russell took too massive a chunk out of the curb at Flip 8 and bottomed out, sending his automobile spinning off the highway and crashing closely into the obstacles on the skin of Flip 9. Trying winded, he clambered from the automobile with out help however was taken to the medical middle for precautionary check-ups, after which he was declared match.
The obstacles weren’t so lucky, and 23 minutes — greater than 1 / 4 of the prolonged 90-minute session — had been misplaced to repairs to the Tecpro obstacles to permit the session to renew.
Working didn’t final lengthy for Verstappen, nevertheless, who was advised to retire his automobile with solely 4 untimed laps on the board with the identical energy unit drawback that pressured him to finish FP1 early. Earlier within the session he had reported listening to “a bizarre noise within the engine.”
“This noise may be very disturbing,” he radioed. “This will’t be regular.”
He additionally reported brake issues earlier than pitting.
With Alex Albon failing to participate within the session owing to incomplete repairs from his massive FP1 crash, 17 drivers had been left to proceed with the remainder of the session.
It was essential for Pirelli that operating might get again underway, with every driver required to embark on a painstaking deliberate program dictated by the tire provider to validate its 2025 tire compounds. Every driver was given two units of tires — one of many three compounds in use this weekend and one other corresponding compound from subsequent 12 months’s allocation.
All tires had been unmarked and with out their standard figuring out colours, and every driver accomplished an an identical sequence of efficiency runs and race simulations with matching gas hundreds.
Solely the 5 drivers who handed their vehicles to stand-in drivers throughout FP1 — Lando Norris, Charles Leclerc, Lewis Hamilton, Fernando Alonso and Zhou Guanyu — had been allowed to interrupt from this system with a contemporary set of medium tires to make up for misplaced lap time, although what had initially been a 30-minute allowance was shortened to simply the ultimate jiffy of the session.
The blind Pirelli testing program meant occasions had been inconceivable to check and unrepresentative of the remainder of the weekend’s operating.
Oscar Piastri was second and 0.178s behind Sainz, with Yuki Tsunoda third for the second straight session, lapping 0.179 off the tempo.
Charles Leclerc and Lando Norris adopted on the medium tires, with Kevin Magnussen, Lewis Hamilton, Valtteri Bottas, Sergio Perez and Liam Lawson finishing the highest 10.
Fernando Alonso completed the session eleventh forward of Nico Hulkenberg, Esteban Ocon, Lance Stroll, Franco Colapinto, Pierre Gasly, Zhou Guanyu and the crashed-out Russell.
The untimed Verstappen and Albon had been nineteenth and twentieth.
