Red Bull’s rivals have time to find – but Perez is closer to Verstappen than it seems

Although the circuit in Mexico City that plays host to the Mexican Grand Prix is named in tribute to Formula 1’s two trailblazing Rodriguez brothers, Pedro and Ricardo, the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, the venue has been synonymous with Sergio Perez since it returned to the calendar in 2015.

As the most successful driver ever to hail from Mexico, Perez enjoys passionate and partisan support unlike few drivers on the grid get at their home grands prix.

Yet while tens of thousands filled up the grandstands in Mexico City on Friday to watch the opening two practice sessions and cheer on their man from Guadalajara, very few of them would have been surprised to see world champion Max Verstappen yet again sitting in the number one spot at the end of both practice sessions.

Verstappen finished day one of the Mexican weekend in perfect form. His best time of a 1’18.686 was ultimately four places and three tenths faster than his Red Bull team mate’s personal best – about par for the course for Perez over the period following the summer break. But while the timing screen suggested that there was another small but significant gulf in performance between the two Red Bull drivers, Perez at least could offer a plausible excuse this time by.

“We didn’t have a straightforward day,” Perez admitted after he had been safely ferried from the Red Bull garage and through the packed paddock to the media pen.

“We didn’t get a good read on the softs over a single lap. I had a yellow flag on my lap, so I ended up doing it on the second timed lap. So plenty of things to understand.”

Data shows that Perez was far closer to Verstappen’s best time of the day on his first push lap on softs – just 0.072s off from his team mate through the first half of the lap until having to back for yellow flags at turn eight. Although it’s impossible to know what time he would have eventually posted after completing the lap, it does suggest that at this early stage of the weekend, Perez may not be as far off his team mate as the timing screen suggests.

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Instead, the driver closest to Verstappen, as he has been on more than one Friday over the last two months, was Lando Norris in the McLaren. Just a tenth of a second separated Verstappen from Norris on their ultimate pace – perhaps unexpectedly so, given how Norris had been playing down McLaren’s prospects heading into the weekend. But Verstappen was not buying that.

“They [McLaren] have been close already for a few races now, so for me there is no surprise there,” Verstappen said. “I think tomorrow is going to be incredibly competitive over one lap.”

Norris had a 6kph deficit to Verstappen at the end of the very long main straight, meaning he lost two tenths to the Red Bull before he’d even hit the brake pedal for turn one. But with McLaren’s strengths in high speed corners, Norris hung onto Verstappen through the sweepers. But even more notably, Norris actually gained time on Verstappen through the fiddly stadium section on his fastest lap, which is where the McLaren was expected to be at its weakest. No wonder Norris was feeling optimistic.

“A good start to the weekend,” came Norris’s assessment. “It’s close. A couple of bits still to improve, but we’re off to a good start and can build from here.”

While the likes of Mercedes and Aston Martin did not feature in the top five in either of the two practice sessions, there were some surprise names up near the top of the order. In the early session, Alexander Albon put Williams second-quickest, while Valtteri Bottas was so excited to be in the top four at the end of second practice that he started scrapping with Verstappen into turn one after the chequered flag.

Albon could hold onto his lofty position in the second session, but like Perez, his quickest time was not fully representative. A major lift through turn nine cost him at least a quarter-of-a-second to Verstappen – with that time back, his Williams would likely have been well inside the top ten once more.

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Bottas had missed the opening session entirely after sitting out to allow Theo Pourchaire to drive. Sadly, a brake problem meant that Pourchaire got no laps and Bottas no data from the first hour, but that didn’t appear to slow Bottas down as he matched Charles Leclerc’s single-lap pace.

“I am pleased with how today went,” Bottas said after the session. “Thankfully, we found the issue that affected our car during FP1, and we were able to address it and quickly solve it between the sessions. I got a good number of laps under my belt, and the feeling with the car was generally pretty good.”

At Ferrari, Leclerc appeared to have put Ferrari in the mix by setting the third fastest time of the day on his qualifying simulation run on the softs. However, despite having taken pole position in last weekend’s grand prix qualifying session in the United States, Leclerc admitted that his team had “a lot of work to do” if they wanted to realistically battle for pole position in Mexico.

“McLaren seems to be extremely strong,” Leclerc said. “Obviously the Red Bull and Max seem to be very, very strong. It would be a huge surprise if we were to get pole position here.”

The other team who did not appear as confident as they had been one week ago were Mercedes. The team admitted they were struggling with their car which helped explain why Frederik Vesti ended the first session the slowest of the five junior drivers taking part in opening hour. Lewis Hamilton finished two seconds behind Verstappen at Circuit of the Americas, but he was left confused by how much had changed from Austin after Friday, calling it a “challenging day”.

With an extra hour of running before qualifying, there is fortunately still time for Red Bull’s rivals to be able to wring more pace out of their packages ahead of the grid-setting session. But unless they can, Perez might be the only one who can stop Verstappen from taking his 11th pole of the season in front of his home fans.

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Combined practice times

P.	#	Driver	Team	FP1 time	FP2 time	Gap	Laps
1	1	Max Verstappen	Red Bull-Honda RBPT	1’19.718	1’18.686		55
2	4	Lando Norris	McLaren-Mercedes	1’20.237	1’18.805	0.119	61
3	16	Charles Leclerc	Ferrari	1’20.297	1’18.952	0.266	63
4	77	Valtteri Bottas	Alfa Romeo-Ferrari		1’18.955	0.269	33
5	11	Sergio Perez	Red Bull-Honda RBPT	1’20.015	1’18.988	0.302	57
6	3	Daniel Ricciardo	AlphaTauri-Honda RBPT	1’20.568	1’19.002	0.316	61
7	44	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	1’20.724	1’19.024	0.338	55
8	31	Esteban Ocon	Alpine-Renault	1’20.677	1’19.077	0.391	55
9	81	Oscar Piastri	McLaren-Mercedes	1’20.463	1’19.163	0.477	63
10	63	George Russell	Mercedes		1’19.227	0.541	31
11	55	Carlos Sainz Jnr	Ferrari	1’20.479	1’19.257	0.571	57
12	22	Yuki Tsunoda	AlphaTauri-Honda RBPT		1’19.290	0.604	34
13	24	Zhou Guanyu	Alfa Romeo-Ferrari	1’21.129	1’19.415	0.729	54
14	23	Alexander Albon	Williams-Mercedes	1’19.813	1’19.446	0.760	54
15	27	Nico Hulkenberg	Haas-Ferrari	1’20.968	1’19.535	0.849	58
16	10	Pierre Gasly	Alpine-Renault		1’19.642	0.956	29
17	2	Logan Sargeant	Williams-Mercedes	1’21.157	1’19.900	1.214	56
18	18	Lance Stroll	Aston Martin-Mercedes	1’20.687	1’20.075	1.389	43
19	20	Kevin Magnussen	Haas-Ferrari		1’20.112	1.426	30
20	14	Fernando Alonso	Aston Martin-Mercedes	1’21.347	1’20.426	1.740	47
21	50	Oliver Bearman	Haas-Ferrari	1’21.313		2.627	31
22	41	Isack Hadjar	AlphaTauri-Honda RBPT	1’21.941		3.255	25
23	61	Jack Doohan	Alpine-Renault	1’22.109		3.423	25
24	42	Frederik Vesti	Mercedes	1’22.937		4.251	26

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2023 Mexican Grand Prix

• ‘I’m so s*** in qualifying’: Norris berates himself despite pole-winning lap
• Ferrari reaping the benefits of having F1’s most closely-matched team mates
• Norris had “no chance” to beat Verstappen in Mexico even without Q1 exit
• Transcript: How Ricciardo’s race went awry soon after he was told to “bring it home”
• Mercedes see “very encouraging signs” from Austin floor update

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