Verstappen dominates second free practice at the Mexican Grand Prix

Max Verstappen comfortably finished on top of the time charts in second free practice at the 2021 Mexican Grand Prix at the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez circuit in Mexico City. Valtteri Bottas and Lewis Hamilton finished in second position and third positions at the end of the second free practice session.

The sixty-minute long second free practice session started under dry conditions with air temperatures at 21 degrees C and track temperatures at 41 degrees C.

The Pirelli tyre choice at this race is the white-striped hard compound tyres (C2), yellow-striped medium compound tyres (C3), and red-striped soft compound tyres (C4).

It will be Yuki Tsunoda and Lance Stroll’s turn to take on a new power unit and start the race from the back of the grid. Lewis Hamilton has escaped with a reprimand for incorrectly rejoining the track in the morning practice session.

All the drivers went out on the track as soon as the session started. Verstappen is the early leader on the medium compound tyres with a lap time of 1m18.818s.

Verstappen was flying and was the first driver to dip into the 1 minute17 seconds with a lap time of 1m17.920s.

Bottas slotted into second position on the time charts on his first run on the soft compound tyres. Verstappen then comfortably extended his lead at the top to over 0.5 seconds over the Mercedes drivers.

Daniel Ricciardo and George Russell hit trouble with gearbox issues during the session.

With twenty minutes to go, the teams started their race simulations with long runs. Verstappen had a slight edge over the Mercedes drivers in long run pace.

Verstappen showed the true pace in the afternoon session with Sergio Pérez in good form in fourth position. Bottas and Hamilton have a lot of work to do to close the gap to Verstappen as they had to be content with second and third positions.

Carlos Sainz was “best of the rest” in fifth position. Pierre Gasly was in sixth position ahead of Charles Leclerc.

Yuki Tsunoda, Sebastian Vettel and Fernando Alonso rounded off the top ten positions.

The McLaren F1 team had their customary low-key Friday with Lando Norris in twelfth position splitting the Alfa Romeo Racing drivers. Ricciardo’s session was curtailed due to reliability issues.

The session ended with Red Bull Racing on top with a clear edge over Mercedes at the end of Friday.

2021 Mexican GP FP2 Results:

Pos	No	Driver	Nat.	Teams	Time	Gap	Laps
1	33	Max Verstappen	NED	Red Bull Racing	1:17.301		28
2	77	Valtteri Bottas	FIN	Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team	1:17.725	+0.424s	31
3	44	Lewis Hamilton	GBR	Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team	1:17.810	+0.509s	26
4	11	Sergio Perez	MEX	Red Bull Racing	1:17.871	+0.570s	26
5	55	Carlos Sainz	ESP	Scuderia Ferrari	1:18.318	+1.017s	29
6	10	Pierre Gasly	FRA	Scuderia AlphaTauri Honda	1:18.429	+1.128s	29
7	16	Charles Leclerc	MON	Scuderia Ferrari	1:18.605	+1.304s	28
8	22	Yuki Tsunoda	JAP	Scuderia AlphaTauri Honda	1:18.644	+1.343s	31
9	5	Sebastian Vettel	GER	Aston Martin Cognizant Formula One Team	1:18.681	+1.380s	32
10	14	Fernando Alonso	ESP	Alpine F1 Team	1:18.732	+1.431s	27
11	7	Kimi Räikkönen	FIN	Alfa Romeo Racing ORLEN	1:18.841	+1.540s	25
12	4	Lando Norris	GBR	McLaren F1 Team	1:18.979	+1.678s	27
13	99	Antonio Giovinazzi	ITA	Alfa Romeo Racing ORLEN	1:19.227	+1.926s	31
14	31	Esteban Ocon	FRA	Alpine F1 Team	1:19.431	+2.130s	37
15	3	Daniel Ricciardo	AUS	McLaren F1 Team	1:19.521	+2.220s	7
16	47	Mick Schumacher	GER	Uralkali Haas F1 Team	1:19.620	+2.319s	30
17	18	Lance Stroll	CAN	Aston Martin Cognizant Formula One Team	1:19.730	+2.429s	36
18	6	Nicholas Latifi	CAN	Williams Racing	1:20.820	+3.519s	17
19	9	Nikita Mazepin	RAF	Uralkali Haas F1 Team	1:21.581	+4.280s	28
20	63	George Russell	GBR	Williams Racing			2