F1 Mexico GP live commentary and updates - FP2

And that's all from us tonight - thanks for joining us!

We'll be back tomorrow for FP3 and qualifying, so hopefully we'll see you then!

"How did it look? I guess McLaren are on another planet?" Leclerc asks on race pace. "Yeah, McLaren are fast - Norris more so than Piastri," comes the reply from engineer Bryan Bozzi.

Gasly evaded a dive from Stroll at Turn 1 there, as the Canadian went deep into the first corner. 

Proper race preparation for Sunday.

Leclerc shapes for a move on Russell there into Turn 1, but decides discretion is the better part of valour. Still, he got close - even though DRS isn't hugely effective here.

Antonelli has a lock-up in the Foro Sol, and takes a dim view of Lawson being in front of him. 

Lots of traffic here, so it's not like Lawson can disappear - just ask Yuki Tsunoda.

Leclerc takes a very aggressive approach to the Turn 1-2-3 kerbs - which definitely looked a bit track limits-y. Laps have been deleted for cutting the kerbs there - so the drivers will have to behave a bit there tomorrow!

Kerb your enthusiasm, gents.

Piastri's McLaren looked a bit lairy through the esses - even on soft tyres, grip doesn't look stunning. 

We'll be delving into the race pace a little bit later tonight, which will be available on Autosport in the morning.

Verstappen has a bit of a slide out of Turn 4; he misses the apex, tries to steer to the left to open up the next corner, but the rear doesn't fancy it.

"There's just no grip," he reports. 

George Russell's out on the medium, and he reckons that it "feels terrible" at the moment.

Ocon, Hadjar, and Hulkenberg are trying the hard tyres out to see if they're a viable race tyre. Otherwise, the rest of the field are split on mediums and softs.

Plenty of drivers trying taking the soft tyres out for a long run as they look to see how deep into a stint they get. Verstappen and Albon are circulating on mediums.

With another compound split this weekend, with a jump between C2 hard tyres and C4 mediums, the teams might be looking to avoid the hard for a race - as per Austin.

Norris gets a bit closer on his second tilt at a lap, 0.25s off Verstappen's chart-topper to go fourth - as Antonelli got up to third.

Hamilton gets a soft-tyre lap in to go fifth. We've now approached another transition point as the teams start to look at long runs.

Alonso fires his Aston Martin up to fifth - another driver to get clear of the two McLarens in the timing charts.

The top 11 are all within a second, as Bearman goes 12th, 1.1s off the pace.

Leclerc does a 1m17.545s on softs - that's more like it. Norris is a bit up on the Ferrari driver's first sector - Piastri, however, is not quite there and appears to have made a mistake in sector 2.

Piastri is 0.687s off - and Norris is 0.635s off as he can't unfurl a decent final sector.

Russell goes up to second, with Sainz currently third.

The soft runs are about to begin - lots of prep laps on the C5 compound now.

Who's got some pace in their pocket? Let's find out. 

Albon gets up to seventh on that run on softs, half a second off Leclerc's benchmark. He got a bit squirrelly out of the final corner and brushed the barrier - which might have cost him a smidgen of time.

Antonelli's back on track after that apparent glitch behind the wheel, and gets on his merry way. Stroll and Albon appear to be starting soft runs as we approach the quali sim point ahead of the longer runs.

Leclerc sets a brace of purple sectors, but just loses a little bit in the last sector and goes about 0.05s shy of his previous benchmark.

Our top 10 order, as cars start to emerge in the pit garages again is: Leclerc, Norris, Hamilton, Verstappen, Piastri, Bortoleto, Alonso, Stroll, Tsunoda, and Albon.

Leclerc posts a 1m18.353s now, that's better than his FP1 headline time. That puts him 0.328s up on Norris as it stands, as the Briton goes off at Turn 11.

We're 15 minutes in at this stage; only Antonelli and Stroll are in the pits as the tyres are hanging on for a few laps.

Russell has another tilt on those mediums and goes up to seventh, although the mediums do lose a bit of performance lap-on-lap.

Stroll has done a run on softs and goes up to sixth.

Hamilton does a best first sector of the session so far, and goes up to third - just 0.02s off Leclerc's current benchmark.

Antonelli's in the garage, Russell's had an off - less auspicious moment for Red Bull there.

Norris has got within 0.012s of Leclerc on his latest run on mediums, while Verstappen's gone fourth with a slightly scruffy lap as he missed the apex in the stadium.

Antonelli's clearly not suffering with the car, as he does a 1m19.444s to go top. 

For reference, Leclerc's line-leading time in FP1 was a 1m18.380s on the softs.
 

Antonelli has an issue - limp home mode on the car. He's just got out of the pit lane - not an ideal start.

Russell, meanwhile, does a 1m20.253s to kick us off in this session.

FP2 will get rolling very shortly - let's hope the F1 GPS issues have been solved for this one! 

We should get our first view of the overall pace from this weekend - FP1 was effectively a sweep operation for the track.

Why McLaren feels halting 2025 F1 development was right call against Red Bull

McLaren has explained why it still backs its decision to halt development of its 2025 F1 challenger early, leaving the door open for Red Bull to take the upper hand.

McLaren made 2024's best car better with an innovative approach over the off-season, picking up where it left off as F1's dominant team before the summer break. It further enhanced its car with significant upgrades in Canada, Austria and Britain, but after its Silverstone floor overhaul the Woking-based team has fully shifted focus to 2026, other than finding some minor efficiency gains with its Monza wing and floor as well as some other track-specific items.

McLaren's early season advantage was enough to canter to a second consecutive constructors' title by Singapore, but at the same time it also started getting caught be a reinvigorated Red Bull squad, which has brought another new floor to its RB21 at the Mexico Grand Prix.

Komatsu: Haas' Austin upgrade performing as expected

Haas introduced a new floor for the United States Grand Prix - one which team principal Ayao Komatsu says has produced the gains expected - even if it was not a "huge difference".

"Yeah, as far as we can see it was performing - it's not a huge difference, but the midfield is so tight so it's very difficult to compete. 

"So even if you find a tenth in the car you know that can be a difference between out in Q1 and make it to Q3."
 
"Because it's so small we really wanted to make sure it was a step forward so we just put it in one car in Austin FP1. We measured it, looked like it was going in the right direction.  I think it's a balance between low speed to high speed. We always had a bit of instability in high speed and lots of understeer in low speed which is the same for I think everyone."

Ayao Komatsu, Haas F1 Team

Photo by: James Sutton / LAT Images via Getty Images

Browning identifies areas for improvement after Williams FP1 run

Luke Browning took part in his third FP1 session in a Williams, but had never driven the Mexico City circuit before - and found the altitude "a bit different" to contend with.

The Cheshire native reckoned that he might have been able to get more out of the medium compound if he'd had his time again, having expected them to be closer to the hards on performance.

"It would have been nice to be a little bit closer on the medium, considering how close we were on the hards. And equally in the race run. So, I think it'll be going away and trying to predict that grip jump next time.

"I thought it was going to be maybe a tyre that lasted a little bit longer. I thought maybe it'd be able to improve in the third lap. But it just turned out to be completely one lap. So that's something to learn for the future."

Luke Browning, Williams

Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Sutton Images via Getty Images

Crawford: Traffic "terrible" in first FP1 session

Aston Martin youngster Jak Crawford did his first FP1 run in place of Lance Stroll, finishing 19th in the times - although he was largely tasked with "keeping it clean" as he ticked off some of the team's test items, he got a run on the C4 (soft) tyres later on.

However, his progress on the timing board was interrupted by traffic. 

"I mean obviously my expectations are quite low - even driving at this track everyone is kind of complaining about the conditions and about the low grip, but of course coming from F2 it's still a lot of grip for me, so I was able just to build up and it was still fine for me," Crawford said.

"I think the worst part actually was the traffic, which was terrible. I didn't get many clean laps, especially when I put on the C4 set near the end of the session, and it was quite frustrating and a bit of a mess, to be honest."

Jak Crawford, Aston Martin F1 Team

Photo by: Andy Hone/ LAT Images via Getty Images

FP2 in Mexico coming up!

Hello again everyone, and thanks for joining us for our live feed of updates for FP2 at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez!

After FP1 was jam-packed with rookie driver fulfilling the quota on practice appearances, we're back to our usual 20 suspects.

Esteban Ocon, Haas F1 Team

Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Sutton Images via Getty Images