Mexico – Free Practice 2: Ricciardo dominates the session with ease
After several incidents disrupted the first half of the session, Daniel Ricciardo stood out by setting the fastest time in the second session and on the track for the Mexican Grand Prix, ahead of Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton and his own teammate Max Verstappen, all while only running on soft tires.
The second free practice session on Friday begins with the McLaren’s Belgian driver, Stoffel Vandoorne, taking to the track, followed by the Haas drivers. Just a few minutes after the green light, Romain Grosjean’s spin while attacking the straight parallel to the pits leads to the red flag being waved at the Hermanos Rodriguez circuit. The material consequences of this puzzling incident were significant, as the crash damaged the floor of Grosjean’s car, preventing the French driver from returning to the Mexican track this Friday. It was the debris scattered on the track from his disintegrating car floor that prompted the marshals to wave the red flags.
😮 Five mins into FP2 and GRO goes for a spin at Turn 17 #MexicoGP 🇲🇽 #F1 pic.twitter.com/x44AZszO63
— Formula 1 (@F1) 27 octobre 2017
RED FLAG 🚩DEBRIS ON TRACK: GRO gets going again after spinning but parts of car’s floor then gets shredded on the pit straight #MexicoGP #F1 pic.twitter.com/Qj4KdVU30D
— Formula 1 (@F1) 27 octobre 2017
The session resumed 14 minutes after the initial start of the meeting.
The series of off-track excursions continues in Mexico with Lewis Hamilton coming to abandon a set of new tires in turn #11. A few moments later, it was Lance Stroll and Fernando Alonso who ventured off the regulatory track.
🔄 Huge spin for HAM at Turn 11 #MexicoGP 🇲🇽 #F1 pic.twitter.com/mYZaLUBaO4
— Formula 1 (@F1) 27 octobre 2017
The race incidents are increasing with Sebastian Vettel’s tricky pit entry as he reports over the radio of an “acid leak” under his bucket seat, likely a leak from the extinguisher with which each car on the grid is equipped as per the sporting regulations.
All ok on #Seb5‘s car, we replaced the fire estinguisher #MexicoGP #FP2 pic.twitter.com/xu9e7Vkf3P
— Scuderia Ferrari (@ScuderiaFerrari) 27 octobre 2017
After 30 minutes of testing, it is the overall standings leader Hamilton who holds the provisional best time, more than 0.3 seconds ahead of his teammate Bottas, followed by the two Red Bull drivers, within less than 1 second, Alonso, Vettel, Massa, Ocon, and Pérez in 10th.
There is no Mercedes hegemony during the session: Daniel Ricciardo manages to climb to the top of the timesheet with a lap of 1:17.801 on yellow-walled soft tires, ahead of Hamilton. The Brit is actually surrounded by the Red Bulls, with Max Verstappen in 3rd place: these three men are within less than 0.17 seconds of each other!
Gaps that will not change until the end of the session, as the teams have decided to work almost exclusively on race pace after a significant portion of the session was cut short by various off-track excursions.
The Ferrari drivers are also lurking, at 0.250 s. and 0.341 s. from the benchmark for Vettel and Räikkönen, respectively.
INITIAL CLASSIFICATION (END OF FP2): Half-a-second splits the top six #MexicoGP 🇲🇽 #F1 pic.twitter.com/WMrDy8PbMI
— Formula 1 (@F1) 27 octobre 2017
