Mercedes driver George Russell set the pace during the opening practice session for Formula 1’s Mexico City Grand Prix, which featured five young drivers, and an unusual accident.
Russell used Soft tyres to set a time of 1:17.998s around the high altitude and dusty Autodromo Hermanos Rodríguez, leaving him 0.317s clear of Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz.
Half of the 10 teams elected to use Mexico City’s FP1 session to run a young driver and one of them, Ferrari’s Ollie Bearman, was involved in an atypical clash with Williams’ Alex Albon.
Albon slid through Turn 10 but as he tried to correct the car encountered the dirty air from Bearman, who was running in front on track but not on a hot lap.
As Albon’s tried to save the slide he overcorrected, and clipped the side of Bearman’s Ferrari, who had pulled off-line to let him through, and spun into the wall on the outside of the track, with his FW46 sustaining heavy damage.
Bearman’s car also copped damage and he came to a stop by the side of the track.
The session was halted for 15 minutes while the cars were removed and the barriers were repaired.
RB’s Yuki Tsunoda was third overall, ahead of World Champion Max Verstappen, with Haas’ Nico Hulkenberg fifth.
Oscar Piastri was sixth in the McLaren, with the Australian not running the updated floor that will feature on Lando Norris’ car for the remainder of the weekend.
Norris sat out FP1, with home hero Pato O’Ward instead driving the MCL38; he started on the old-spec floor before switching to the new version midway through running.
O’Ward finished the session down in 13th position.
Elsewhere in the field Mercedes’ 2025 signing Andrea Kimi Antonelli had his second FP1 of the year and caused a brief red flag early in the session when he struck debris on the approach to Turn 1.
Antonelli was nonetheless able to continue his programme and finished in 11th spot.
Felipe Drugovich had his sole planned practice outing of the campaign with Aston Martin – with Jak Crawford set to run in Abu Dhabi – and he finished 18th, having encountered a slow-moving Piastri in the final sector, with Robert Shwartzman carrying out duties for Sauber.
Sergio Perez finished the session in 10th place on home turf, a thousandth of a second behind RB’s Liam Lawson.
READ MORE – F1 2024 Mexico City Grand Prix – FP1 Results
