Max Verstappen worked for the flying lap and was the fastest in the first free practice session of the Mexican GP: the Dutchman on the soft tire reached a 1’19″718 with the Red Bull, easily a second faster than to last year. The Dutchman then started a long run with the mediums without giving the sensation of holding an extraordinary pace, while Sergio Perez certainly did better with the other RB19 in the small race simulation, while in the flying lap he closed third with a gap of 297 thousandths from his teammate.
Between the two Red Bulls Alexander Albon was a bit of a surprise with Williams: the Anglo-Thai arrived within 95 thousandths of the three-time world champion. The FW45, which does not excel in terms of aerodynamic load, defends itself more than admirably in rarefied air, where Monza-like speeds can be reached with Monaco-type aerodynamic settings with maximum wing incidence.
In fourth position is Lando Norris with McLaren, but the Englishman paid for a gap of more than half a second with the MCL60. Lando gave a couple of tenths of a second to Oscar Piastri who closed the session in sixth place. Charles Leclerc slipped between the two papaya cars with the Ferrari: the red car was fifth with the Monegasque closing in on a gap of seven tenths from the top. For now the SF-23 hasn’t particularly shone. Carlos Sainz is seventh, but the Spaniard suffered a problem with the hydraulics of the power steering and lost a lot of time in the first phase of the session.
Daniel Ricciardo is in eighth place with the AlphaTauri ahead of Esteban Ocon’s Alpine and Lance Stroll’s Aston Martin who certainly did better than Fernando Alonso only 16th with the second green car.
Setup problems have slowed down Lewis Hamilton with Mercedes: the seven-time world champion has asked for changes to the setup but the music has changed and the gap of a second from Verstappen shows that there is something not right on the black arrow. The Brackley team was unable to make comparison evaluations with the second car because Frederic Vesti was in the W14 instead of George Russell. The rookie finished 19th leaving over two seconds to the seven-time world champion: definitely too much even for a rookie new to F1.
In this session there were five young drivers: the one who made the best impression was certainly Oliver Bearman, the FDA standard bearer who got on Kevin Magnussen’s Haas. The Briton made a positive impression by taking the VF-23 to 15th place, but for a long time he was close to Nico Hulkenberg who saw the checkered flag from 12th with a work program very similar to his debuting teammate.
Guanyu Zhou’s performance with Alfa Romeo was positive: the Chinese climbed to 13th place with the C43, while David Pourcher in Valtteri Bottas’ car only closed four laps due to a serious problem with the brake by wire of his Alfa Romeo. In fact he didn’t run on his F1 debut: too bad!
Logan Sargeant put the Williams in 14th place, but the American suffers from the gap to Albon: the gap of 1″4 weighs heavily and nothing else needs to be said. If we go back to the rookies we must point out Isack Adjar’s 17th place with the AlphaTauri and Jack Doohan’s 18th place with Alpine.
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