F1 Mexico GP Live Commentary and Updates – FP3 & Qualifying
Saturday's action from the 19th round of the 2023 Formula 1 season
Live AppleTV Race Audio
Max Verstappen and Red Bull may have both world championship crowns tied up already, but there remains plenty to play for in Mexico.
After seeing his points advantage over Lewis Hamilton grow to 39 points through the Mercedes driver's disqualification in the United States, Sergio Perez will be keen to put on a show for his home fans and solidify his second position in the standings.
FP3 starts at 6:30pm BST with qualifying at 10:00pm BST.
As we open up the timing screen in preparation for the coming qualifying session, we can see there is a 10% chance of rain. There are clouds around but with air temps of 25.5C, track temps of 46.5C and wind speeds of 1.6m/s, it is unlikely that would have a drastic effect on things.
Looking away from F1 once more, some news for our Australian readers after it was announced that the 2024 Supercars season will begin at Bathurst's Mount Panorama circuit.
But one thing appears pretty certain, this will be another painful weekend for Aston Martin. Both cars have had a far from straightforward time of it and look in serious danger of a Q1 exit. After leading the charge against Red Bull earlier in the year, the fall continues.
The rest of the order has been slightly difficult to predict, with Ferrari strong on Friday but hitting traffic in FP3 and Mercedes growing in pace as the sessions have progressed.
Briefly breaking from the recap, there are major distractions during the build-up in Mexico, with the Rugby Union World Cup final from France and the boxing in Saudi Arabia.
Max Verstappen has so far topped every session of the weekend with - somewhat surprisingly - his greatest challenge so far coming from Williams driver Alex Albon. Less than one-tenth separated the pair in FP3, so don't rule out a Williams featuring on the front row.
Elsewhere, it was a poor end to practice for Alpine, with Gasly 18th and Ocon 20th, along with Haas in 16th (Hulkenberg) and 19th (Magnussen) also down the order.
It was a pretty much identical issue between Leclerc and Magnussen. The Dane said he couldn't see the Ferrari driver and his race engineer Mark Slade says he told him he was coming. Ooooooh, drama.
The incident involving Stroll and Sainz has been noted by race control. Sainz felt it was deserving of a penalty, so we'll wait to see how that one plays out. Stroll was definitely slow and in the middle of the corner when Sainz arrived.
Ferrari has left it late for its final soft tyre run in the session, but Leclerc hits traffic in the shape of Magnussen so he has to back out of the lap.
Verstappen has clearly had enough of former team-mate Albon taking the spotlight, as he regains top spot with a 1m17.887s but is only 0.070s quicker than the Williams driver.
Magnussen aside, each pairing of drivers are closely matched apart from Ricciardo in fourth and Tsunoda in 16th. But AlphaTauri are likely to be running different programmes for the Japanese driver given qualifying is irrelevant for him due to his grid penalty.
The track dominance TV graphic shows Perez has the edge in sector 1 with the long straights, but Verstappen holds the advantage in sectors 2 and 3 with the twisty stuff.
Perez winds up his Red Bull to put in a lap to push him to third overall, a 1m18.787s, while Ricciardo goes back to fourth with a 1m18.944s still on the mediums.
Ricciardo and Tsunoda practice the tow down the straight. It's been a useful tool for teams in the past here in quali, but it has its own risks if the drivers get it wrong.
