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Formula 1
Mexican GP
F1 Mexico City GP Live Commentary and Updates - FP3 & Qualifying
Saturday's action at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez in Mexico City
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Both Russell and Vettel improve with their final Q1 laps to push Latifi and Alonso into the drop zone.
Checkered flag
Sainz jumps up to the top 10 to comfortably make it into Q2. Latifi improves but not by enough to displace Vettel ahead of him.
Sainz is the driver at risk having had his earlier engine worry and a couple of messy laps. He is P15 but does have a healthy gap over his nearest challenger Latifi.
Currently Latifi, Schumacher, Mazepin, Russell and Stroll are in the drop zone. Mazepin tries to get ahead of his team-mate on track but is told in no uncertain terms over his team radio to stay behind and create a gap.
Stopwatch
Better from the Mercs, as Bottas goes P2 with a 1m16.959s which is just one-tenth of a second off Verstappen. Hamilton is up to P3 but four-tenths back.
Behind the top two Norris has split the Mercedes pair to go P4, who are going for a second push lap in Q1 with four minutes of the session to go.
Stopwatch
That's a statement lap from Verstappen. The Red Bull driver's 1m16.788s is 0.663s faster than team-mate Perez in second place.
Stopwatch
Hamilton then takes over at the top, but not for long as Mercedes team-mate Bottas goes P1 with a 1m17.516s.
Stopwatch
Right, some actual Q1 lap times of note, as Gasly goes top with a 1m17.746s.
A few flicked switches on his steering wheel and advice from his race engineer and Sainz gets his Ferrari back up and running. Panic over.
Anyway, here we go for Q1 Part II. But not for Sainz, who is crawling on the main straight out of pitlane with no power.
TV replays have shown why Raikkonen is under investigation. He was right behind Stroll when he crashed and when the red flag came out he had already passed the pit entry bollard but began to pit anyway, only to pull back on to the track.
A red flag incident involving Raikkonen will be investigated after the session. Hmmm.
Q1 will resume at 14:33 local time. That's five minutes time - just like they promised!
The delay is due to the ongoing repairs to the barriers that took a double tap from Stroll.
Race control have stated a five-minute warning will be given before Q1 resumes. So we've got a five minutes at the very least, but likely to be a fair bit more. Best to delay those firework plans.
Red Bull has confirmed it is "precautionary work" being carried out on the rear wing of its cars during this stoppage. They also confirm there are no cracks, which was the issue from Austin.
Stroll's beaten up Aston Martin has been returned to the pitlane, so at least his mechanics can get busy repairing the car for tomorrow. No word on a restart time for Q1 just yet for the rest of us.
Race director Michael Masi has come down to the scene of the accident to inspect the crash barriers which are being repaired. That means the delay might be a little longer than expected. Time to get a brew.
The crash sprayed debris all over the track which is being hastily cleared up by the track marshals. Once that is tidied away Q1 will resume with 10m58s to go.
Stroll lost the rear end of his car which sent him backwards into the wall before being spun around for a second hit with the front. The Canadian appears to be OK and is out of the car.
The Aston Martin driver, who was starting from the back of the grid anyway due to grid penalties, will definitely be at the back now with that crash. He's hit the outside wall coming out of the final corner.
Red flag
Red flag! Stroll has crashed!
Stopwatch
Leclerc goes fastest now with a 1m17.991s.
You can tell where Perez is around the track by where the wave of noise is from the fans. You could call that a Mexican wave.
Stopwatch
Raikkonen sets the early benchmark of 1m19.108s as the rest of the grid begins to emerge from the pits for the first time in Q1.
Russell and the Alfa Romeo drivers have joined the track action. First timed laps coming up.
It doesn't look so calm in the Red Bull garage, with Verstappen's rear wing receiving plenty of last-minute work from the mechanics. Much like it was pre-qualifying back in Austin.
Latifi and the two Haas drivers get things underway on the track early doors. The rest of the drivers are still getting cosy in their cockpits.
Lights green
Here we go, Q1 is underway!
The Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez is packed out and the baseball stadium section is generating a wall of noise. It is a stunning atmosphere for a Formula 1 event.
So far in practice it has been Red Bull on top with Mercedes a fraction off where they would love to be going into qualifying. But this is when it counts over a single lap, with Q1 getting underway in a few minutes time.
Sun
A quick check on the sky and the weather forecasters were spot on: Sunny and dry conditions with a current air temperature of 21.2oC. Perfect.
The quartet of back of the grid-ers will be ordered on their qualifying times, from fastest (17th) to slowest (20th and last). Easy.
Penalty
Stroll, Tsunoda, Norris and Ocon will all take back of the grid penalties into qualifying for power unit changes. Russell is carrying a five-place grid penalty after his race gearbox went pop on Friday.
The other key bit of housekeeping before qualifying is rounding up the grid penalties. And there's a lot of them.
By: Autosport Staff
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