What we learned in Friday practice for the 2025 F1 Mexico GP

Charles Leclerc was curious about Ferrari's nascent demonstration of race pace as the Mexico City FP2 session drew to a close. "Apart from the last two laps, how did it look? I guess McLaren are on another planet?" Engineer Bryan Bozzi handed his charge the reply: "Yeah, McLaren are fast - Norris more so than Piastri."

McLaren hadn't exactly set the world alight across the soft-tyre qualifying simulations. Championship leader Oscar Piastri had a slide on the exit of the opening sector and the time continued to snowball away from him, while Lando Norris needed a second tour on the softs to get into a more respectable position of fourth. "We're already a little bit behind," Norris said, particularly of his current qualifying pace. "The balance of the car is all over the place. Single lap stuff, we're struggling a little bit."

Yet, the Woking-based team looked a bit more settled on the longer runs. Conversely, Max Verstappen roared to the top of the times in FP2 and looked satisfied with his qualifying pace - but grip seemed to elude him amid the race simulations. "It's like driving on ice," Verstappen noted behind the wheel and, on one such occasion, his Red Bull missed the Turn 4 apex, and the rear then stepped out as he tried to correct his line for the following corner.

Leclerc hadn't been far behind in the qualifying simulations; having led the line in FP1 as many of the regular drivers gave up their seats to a host of rookie drivers, he remained in the fray after posting a lap just 0.153s off Verstappen's best effort from the session - with Andrea Kimi Antonelli also close despite losing around 10 minutes to an unspecified technical glitch with his Mercedes.

It all looked very tentative on the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, as the circuit seemed unwilling to rubber in across the opening two sessions. Yet, with no red-flag interruptions, there's a whole host of race lap data to look at.

Norris demonstrates good pace on FP2 soft stint

Norris rued his one-lap pace - but showed up well on his soft-tyre race simulation

Photo by: James Sutton / LAT Images via Getty Images

Although Norris' stint on soft tyres was by no means the longest continuous run during the latter phase of FP2, it was quickest by some margin as the C5s appeared to hold up well through the stint. Bear in mind that Norris had pressed those softs through two qualifying runs, yet the time appeared to remain consistently strong despite a not-unexpected drop-off in the compound.

FP2 long-run averages

One might expect, then, that the C5 Pirellis will be present in the race - although Norris' run demonstrated that the tyres can hold up, this was also evident in the runs of Oliver Bearman and, surprisingly, Franco Colapinto.

Bearman racked up the laps for Haas on the soft as Esteban Ocon tried the C2 hard tyre, as Pirelli continued with its compound-split experiments once more. Ocon's pace was actually quite strong versus Bearman's run, suggesting that the C2 hard might be more desirable compared to the C1 used in Austin. Meanwhile, Colapinto's pace on the C5 was towards the bottom of our list, but was nonetheless stronger than Pierre Gasly's race pace on the medium.

There are caveats here, in that many of the drivers had differing levels of traffic during their runs. The softs might be more prone to overheating while running behind other cars, but the mediums did seem to struggle to generate the requisite grip through the stints. It might be a matter of preparation, or a matter of losing even more downforce in the high-altitude conditions that makes the harder compounds a little more difficult to work with. Low surface grip also generated much more sliding through the FP2 session, but this should improve through the weekend as the track continues to rubber in.

Of the other 'Big Four' runners, Mercedes' George Russell did a shorter medium stint than Leclerc to the tune of six laps; extrapolating from the drop-off, one might expect their stints to be slightly more similar over the equivalent stint. As Leclerc's stint was longer, he started to show more signs of performance drop-off versus Hamilton, although this was included as a caveat to the Monegasque's question at the top of this piece. Either way, the Ferrari drivers were largely similar on outright stint pace, with a small advantage conferred to Leclerc.

Verstappen displeased by Red Bull race runs

Verstappen finds traffic in the remodelled Foro Sol

Photo by: Colin McMaster / LAT Images via Getty Images

Verstappen does have reason to be unhappy with Red Bull's long-run pace on the medium. At the moment, the numbers put him pretty level with Williams' Carlos Sainz on the same compound, which is certainly not an eventuality that the Red Bull driver will have expected. While he can perhaps lean on the qualifying pace to do some of the work for him on Saturday, and looks pretty set to continue his streak of pole positions unless the picture dramatically changes, it might be a tough ask to stay there at the current rate.

"The balance wasn't even off, there was just no grip - which was the bigger concern," Verstappen reviewed after the session. If he's in the lead early on, then the subsequent grip loss is less of an issue as traffic is one of the primary mitigating factors here. But still, many of his cleaner-air laps looked a bit off-colour and the team will have to spend the evening trying to dial in a bit more grip into the rear of his car.

There isn't a like-for-like comparison with McLaren as neither Norris nor Piastri did an equivalent run on the mediums - but both did label their soft-tyre stints as "reasonable". However, both drivers have led the call for a bit more consistency with the MCL39, as the front axle looked difficult to jockey through the quicker corners. Onboard footage rather suggested that the car was a bit languid in the high-speed, and overnight set-up changes will be aimed at giving the drivers a bit more feeling in that area; perhaps the front-end numbness that the team rued earlier in the season had never truly been quelled.

Aside from Haas, which benefits from having run its longer stint on the soft, the rest of the midfield order is largely as would be expected. The outlier here is Racing Bulls, as Isack Hadjar's run on the hard tyre had been largely equivalent to Liam Lawson's six-lap foray on the soft towards the end of the session. Unlike Haas, Racing Bulls seemed to struggle a little bit more for grip on the C2 - thus, Hadjar's average of a 1m23.239s sits short of Ocon's 1m22.685s on a similar-length stint. That stint would put Ocon above Verstappen and Sainz in the average-lap ranking above, which might be of further concern to Verstappen.

Nobody really comes away from FP2 with anything approaching perfection, so expect plenty of overnight exploration amid the 10 camps to find a silver bullet for the big-ticket sessions. On the current form, it may be a weekend of divided personalities - those with good qualifying pace might struggle to deliver that over a full race, which could lead to a glut of position-swapping in the first half of Sunday's race.

But that's very much could. We're promising nothing at this stage.

Speaking of 'could' - could Haas spring a surprise in Mexico?

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / LAT Images via Getty Images