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Formula 1 Mexican GP
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What we learned from Friday practice at the 2026 Mexico GP
A raft of rookie drivers, lock-ups, and long soft-tyre stints defined F1's Friday running at Mexico City's Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez – and on race pace, the battle at the top looks tight (again!)
Jake Boxall-Legge
Published: Oct 31, 2026, 1:04 AM
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Ever since the FP1 rookie rule was introduced, it's unsurprising that the opening practice session of the Mexico Grand Prix weekend becomes something of a new-driver fest. Unrepresentative conditions, as the circuit begins the weekend in a 'green' and dusty state, mean that the race drivers don't usually lose too much by sacrificing their sessions for their team's reserve or a young prospect.
10 of the 22 drivers taking part in FP1 this year had never made an F1 start. Ferrari was the only team to feature both regular race drivers in the first session, partly because Lewis Hamilton wanted to conduct a series of front wing tests to bolster his comfort with the front end of the SF-26. Both drivers will have to relinquish their seat for FP1 one more time this year.
The 'usual' rookies demonstrated admirable pace, albeit in a hard-to-read session featuring just over half of the regular drivers, and one where lock-ups were prevalent.
Hard, 'threshold' braking zones have proven to be difficult to get right with the 2026 cars, as picking your braking point is subject to getting the ERS to do most of the work on the rear axle – and if that doesn't happen, the front brakes take too much of the braking force and are prone to locking. Neither Frederik Vesti, driving George Russell's Mercedes, nor Ayumu Iwasa in Max Verstappen's Red Bull seemed to suffer too much on the lengthy run to Turn 1, and they broke into the top five on the timing boards.
Above them, normal service had prevailed: Charles Leclerc led the way from Kimi Antonelli in FP1, as Ferrari did its usual party trick of turning up on Friday practice with the car already in good shape.
Leclerc did the 'double' for the second weekend in a row after headlining FP2, this time over Lando Norris (who missed FP1 as Leonardo Fornaroli took his seat), but it's not uncommon to see Ferrari in control of the Friday sessions, only to lack the through-weekend progression of the other teams and hit the performance plateau sooner. Austin rather manifested a similar scenario, although the race pace of both drivers did demonstrate their Sunday strengths. Imagine where Ferrari could be if the car could qualify...
Leclerc was again crowned Prince of Practice as he topped both Friday charts
Photo by: Colin McMaster / LAT Images via Getty Images
The unique conditions of Mexico City led to questions about the powertrains in the weekend prelude: would the high altitude help Ferrari with its smaller turbo? In theory, it should simply exacerbate the advantages and disadvantages between a smaller and larger turbocharger; Ferrari can spin it up faster and enjoy greater acceleration in the traction zones, but it hits a crossover halfway through the straights.
When the larger turbo is up to speed, spinning more in higher-altitude conditions compared to that at sea level, it can start to shine a bit more. To equalise the air density fed to the engine, the turbo spins more to allow the compressor to do more work and squash the air into a density more equitable than that seen at 'standard' ambient conditions, but it will take a larger turbo more time to reach that speed.
This is seen normally; the trade-off between a small and large turbo falls along these lines but to a slightly lesser degree. Comparing the straightline speed traces of Ferrari and Audi – suspected to have the largest turbo on the grid – the Ferrari has the much better bottom end, but the Audi hits a higher top speed at the end of the straight. However, with most of the corners being short, sharp and low-speed, the small turbo is a bit more of a boon at those acceleration points.
Leclerc ended up doing most of the work for Ferrari in FP2, as Hamilton pulled off the track with a suspected powertrain issue; it wasn't the first for a Ferrari power unit either, as Ollie Bearman's Haas came to a smoky end late in FP1 and required an engine swap between sessions. That Haas managed to conduct that and have Bearman out at the start of FP2 was an impressive turnaround.
In the qualifying simulations, Mercedes demonstrated that it was in the right pace bracket. Kimi Antonelli, as I'm sure you've heard by now, just needs two points (or for someone other than Lewis Hamilton or George Russell to win) to lock down the 2026 title, and he was only 0.2s down on Leclerc during those FP2 quick laps. Max Verstappen couldn't show his full hand either, as he and Liam Lawson decided that they'd get involved in an unnecessary tussle for track position in the Foro Sol and this cost Verstappen his bargeboard. The resulting performance loss is not entirely clear in lap-time terms, but it was a silly and avoidable scenario. Both drivers expected the other to back out. Neither did.
With 71 laps of the Mexico City race to unfold on Sunday, plus a long straight which should make overtaking reasonably open, race pace will be colossally important. And that segues onto our usual analysis of the FP2 long runs...
Norris and McLaren looked occasionally unsettled under heavy braking, but race pace was solid
Photo by: James Sutton / LAT Images via Getty Images
FP2 long run analysis
Position Team (Driver) Av. Time Tyre Laps 1 McLaren (NOR) 1m21.319s S 13 2 Mercedes (RUS) 1m21.442s S 12 3 Red Bull (VER) 1m21.490s S 9 4 Ferrari (LEC) 1m21.501s M 14 5 Alpine (GAS) 1m21.742s M 8 6 Racing Bulls (LAW) 1m22.023s S 13 7 Haas (BEA) 1m22.035s S 11 8 Audi (HUL) 1m22.289s S 11 9 Aston Martin (ALO) 1m22.477s S 11 10 Williams (ALB) 1m22.643s S 9 11 Cadillac (PER) 1m23.099s S 15
As it stands, the softs and the mediums both appear to be pretty handy tyres. Per our very rudimentary calculations, there's a drop-off with the softs of about 0.05s per lap, albeit with a stint maximum of 15 laps (Perez) on one set – and that's assuming a used tyre.
Norris' pace on the soft sits just above Russell's equivalent stint, with Verstappen also in this mix – again, the impact of his broken bargeboard is unclear; although it might not hurt race pace as much as qualifying pace, this effect would snowball deeper into a stint as the loss of downforce contributes to greater sliding on the track. In turn, this would start to wear at the tyre surface, causing graining and thus mechanical damage to the tyre's contact patch.
As Ferrari could only lean on Leclerc's medium run, it's not immediately clear where he fits into this, but the medium tyre is nonetheless marginally slower than the soft and thus you'd expect all four teams to shake out relatively closely at this stage of the weekend. 2026's stint performance has differed towards the end of those stints, as seen in Austin when Ferrari seemed to outlast the Red Bull deeper into the tyre stint.
Pierre Gasly's pace on the medium was actually quicker than Franco Colapinto's soft-tyre stint, which partly suggests that the Frenchman has found a good balance with the C4, and also suggests that Colapinto might be struggling a touch at this point in the weekend. The Argentinian is a step behind his team-mate after giving up his seat for Alpine junior Gabriele Mini, but an overnight data perusal will present the chance to catch up.
There was nothing to split the Racing Bulls pair across their stints, both in the 1m22.0s, which kept them above Bearman's equivalent soft stint in the Haas, with Audi and Nico Hulkenberg not far behind. Hulkenberg had taken most of the practice work on his shoulders, as the other side of the garage struggled with reliability issues throughout the day. F3 runner-up Freddie Slater's FP1 session was dented when a cooling fan was left in his sidepod, which preceded a longer lay-off in the garage as Audi had a suspected powertrain issue to fix, while Gabriel Bortoleto only appeared late in FP2 after his car suffered from a leak.
Alpine and Racing Bulls were even in one-lap performance, but Gasly had the upper hand in the race runs
Photo by: Steven Tee / LAT Images via Getty Images
Fernando Alonso's stint put Aston Martin above Williams, with Cadillac a further four tenths back – Sergio Perez, despite illness, put together a solid turn of pace across practice.
Versus the Williams, the Aston Martin is finding a heap of time in the second sector. It's a far more lithe prospect through the sweepers between Turn 7 and Turn 11, and superior in the series of quick turns. The Williams is stronger at low-speed, but the rear grip doesn't seem to follow the car in yaw at anything above that.
Case in point, the final sector; comparing Alonso's best lap to that of Carlos Sainz, the FW48 can get into the corners faster, but the Aston Martin is better on the exit. Any time gained by Sainz through the Foro Sol stadium evaporates once the cars embark upon the Peraltada.
Aston Martin looked strong in the sweeping corners of the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez
Photo by: Alastair Staley / LAT Images via Getty Images
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Author Jake Boxall-Legge
Jake studied engineering at university, as his original ambition was to design racing cars. He was bad at that, and thus decided to write about them instead with an equally limited skillset. The above article is a demonstration of that. In his spare time, Jake enjoys people, places, and things.
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