Practice report
Formula 1 Mexican GP
Mexican GP: Vettel beats Hamilton by 0.004s in second practice
Sebastian Vettel topped the times in FP2 for the Mexican Grand Prix, the first time a Ferrari has led a practice session since the Belgian GP in August.
Charles Bradley
Edited: Oct 28, 2016, 8:36 PM
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Vettel beat Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton by four thousandths of a second in the supersoft low-fuel runs.
Nico Rosberg was again well off teammate Hamilton's pace but that was enough for third, ahead of Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen.
Red Bull struggled for raw pace, and set the fifth and seventh quickest times with Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen respectively, who sandwiched Force India's Nico Hulkenberg.
During the long runs towards the end of the session, Vettel tripped over McLaren's Fernando Alonso and branded him "an idiot" after he ran wide at Turn 12.
Story of the session
Raikkonen set the early benchmark at 1m22.075s on the medium-compound tyre. Verstappen ran early, keen to make up for the time lost in the first session due to a rear-brake fire.
"Struggling overall with warm-up, very poor grip all around," reported Vettel, just before he took the fastest time with a lap of 1m22.024s to make it a Ferrari 1-2.
There was plenty of early action: Perez suffered a spin at Turn 5, and Rosberg also went off track on his first run of the day. Nasr spun at Turn 6, and Ricciardo went over the kerbs at Turn 12.
Hamilton suffered no such drama, unleashing a 1m20.362s on softs to go P1 by 1.662s at the time. He then suffered a huge lockup at Turn 1, and reported: "This tyre is completely done."
Rosberg got to within 1.151s with a 1m21.513s, then a 1m21.416s lowered the gap to 1.054s.
Vettel was the first frontrunner to try new supersofts, achieving a 1m19.790s at his first attempt.
Raikkonen went P2, despite having to pass Vettel at Turn 1 on his flying lap, with his 1m20.259s effort 0.46s down on his teammate.
Verstappen produced 1m20.619s, which was slower than Hamilton's soft-tyre time. Rosberg went only P4 on supersofts, producing 1m20.406s – also slower than Hamilton's lap on softs.
Hamilton gets close to Vettel's P1
Hamilton then went P2 on supersofts, his 1m19.803s just 0.013s slower than Vettel as he caught a Toro Rosso in the final corners. He complained of traffic on his second flyer, but then improved to 1m19.794s on his third attempt, setting the overall second sector time.
In contrast, Rosberg improved on his second 'push' lap to 1m20.225s to go P3, 0.435s down on Vettel, with Ricciardo going P5 on 1m20.448s.
Nico Hulkenberg was the fastest Force India in sixth, ahead of Verstappen.
Valtteri Bottas was eighth fastest for Williams, ahead of Carlos Sainz's Toro Rosso and Alonso. Sainz had a run-in with Renault's Kevin Magnussen on the run to Turn 1.
Daniil Kvyat was 11th for Toro Rosso, ahead of McLaren's Jenson Button – who reported: "Really struggling with grip. The rear just feels like it's going to fall over."
Felipe Massa was 13th fastest for Williams, ahead of Magnussen.
Sergio Perez failed to run the supersoft tyre, and was 15th for Force India, ahead of Jolyon Palmer's Renault, Pascal Wehrlein's Manor and the Saubers of Marcus Ericsson and Felipe Nasr.
Haas's Romain Grosjean missed a huge chunk of the session after his Haas suffered an ERS failure following his installation lap. He was 20th, with teammate Esteban Gutierrez slowest of all, behind Manor's Esteban Ocon.
The session finished with yellow flags on track after Kvyat stopped on track with an apparent engine failure.
ClaDriverChassisEngineLapsTimeGapInterval 1 
Sebastian Vettel Ferrari Ferrari 47 1'19.790 2 
Lewis Hamilton Mercedes Mercedes 37 1'19.794 0.004 0.004 3 Nico Rosberg Mercedes Mercedes 46 1'20.225 0.435 0.431 4 
Kimi Raikkonen Ferrari Ferrari 37 1'20.259 0.469 0.034 5 
Daniel Ricciardo Red Bull TAG 43 1'20.448 0.658 0.189 6 Nico Hulkenberg Force India Mercedes 43 1'20.574 0.784 0.126 7 
Max Verstappen Red Bull TAG 42 1'20.619 0.829 0.045 8 Valtteri Bottas Williams Mercedes 41 1'20.629 0.839 0.010 9 
Carlos Sainz Jr. Toro Rosso Ferrari 46 1'20.974 1.184 0.345 10 Fernando Alonso McLaren Honda 25 1'21.003 1.213 0.029 11 
Daniil Kvyat Toro Rosso Ferrari 39 1'21.193 1.403 0.190 12 Jenson Button McLaren Honda 39 1'21.198 1.408 0.005 13 
Felipe Massa Williams Mercedes 45 1'21.326 1.536 0.128 14 
Kevin Magnussen Renault Renault 39 1'21.442 1.652 0.116 15 
Sergio Perez Force India Mercedes 41 1'21.579 1.789 0.137 16 Jolyon Palmer Renault Renault 44 1'21.785 1.995 0.206 17 Pascal Wehrlein Manor Mercedes 42 1'21.980 2.190 0.195 18 
Marcus Ericsson Sauber Ferrari 42 1'21.997 2.207 0.017 19 Felipe Nasr Sauber Ferrari 43 1'22.037 2.247 0.040 20 
Romain Grosjean Haas Ferrari 14 1'22.105 2.315 0.068 21 Esteban Ocon Manor Mercedes 44 1'22.298 2.508 0.193 22 Esteban Gutierrez Haas Ferrari 33 1'22.408 2.618 0.110
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