F1 Mexico GP live: Time starts with Verstappen favorite for pole ahead of Norris

“I think we’re in a reasonable spot, I started off the pace pretty fast, I feel like I got to the limit early, not that it was a bad day, but normally we’re pretty good on Friday and everyone catches up on Saturday – we’re already a little behind.

“There’s some work to do tonight. The car’s balance is a little off.”

“It was okay, pretty average on the softs, no surprises with the lap times. Tried a lot of things, overall felt reasonable to me. See if we can shoot up tomorrow.

Most drivers lined up for the practice start and went down the long main straight heading into Turn 1, but Hamilton made a mistake, going off-line and off-track at Turn 2.

All is well though – it reconnected normally.

So after a long race to end the session, Max Verstappen was fastest in 1:17:392 – 0.153 seconds ahead of Charles Leclerc in second and Kimi Antonelli in third.

Lando Norris is fourth, 0.251 seconds behind Verstappen, while Lewis Hamilton completes the top five.

6-10: Russell, Tsunoda, Alonso, Sainz, Stroll

10 minutes to go. The long haul is going well.

Top-5: Verstappen, Leclerc, Antonelli, Norris, Hamilton

Piastri, unknowingly, down in P12…

“This is an extremely exciting team, the excitement is growing, the momentum is gathering with the partners we have announced. It is bursting with us, we are on track and looking forward to bringing in an Audi car and launching a new team next year.”

The Italian’s car recovered and the 18-year-old joined the big boys, sandwiched between the Ferraris, a second off Leclerc’s new-table topping lap on the soft tyres.