Carlos Sainz completed second fastest practice at the Mexico City Grand Prix after the session was cut short by a heavy injury to George Russell.

Title leader Max Verstappen also his trouble, retiring from the session with a recurring power unit problem.

Russell took too much of a bite out of the curb at Turn 8 and bottomed out, sending his car spinning off the road and crashing hard into the barriers on the outside of Turn 9. Looking winded, he climbed out of the car without assistance but was taken. at the medical center for preventive checks, after which he was declared fit.

The barriers were not so lucky and 23 minutes – more than a quarter of the extended 90-minute session – were lost to repairs to the Tecpro barriers to allow the session to resume.

The run didn’t last long for Verstappen, however, who was told to retire his car with just four untimed laps on the board, with the same power unit problem that forced him to end FP1 early. At the start of the session, he had reported hearing “a strange noise in the engine”.

“This noise is very disturbing,” he radioed. “This can’t be normal.”

He also reported problems with the brakes before pitting.

While Alex Albon was unable to take part in the session due to incomplete repairs from his big FP1 crash, 17 drivers were allowed to continue with the remainder of the session.

It was essential for Pirelli that the race could resume, with each driver having to commit to a meticulously planned program dictated by the tire supplier to validate their 2025 tire compounds. Each driver received two sets of tires – one of the three compounds used this weekend and another corresponding compound from next year’s allocation.

All tires were unmarked and without their usual identifying colors, and each driver completed an identical series of performance runs and race simulations with matched fuel loads.

Only the five drivers who handed their cars to substitutes during FP1 — Lando Norris, Charles Leclerc, Lewis Hamilton, Fernando Alonso and Zhou Guanyu — were allowed to exit the program with a fresh set of medium tires to make up for the losses. time per shift, although what had originally been a 30-minute allotment was shortened to just the last few minutes of the session.

Pirelli’s blind testing schedule meant the times were impossible to compare and unrepresentative of the rest of the weekend’s races.

Oscar Piastri was second and 0.178s behind Sainz, with Yuki Tsunoda third for the second consecutive session, 0.179 off the pace.

Charles Leclerc and Lando Norris followed on medium tyres, with Kevin Magnussen, Lewis Hamilton, Valtteri Bottas, Sergio Perez and Liam Lawson completing the top 10.

Fernando Alonso finished the session in 11th place ahead of Nico Hulkenberg, Esteban Ocon, Lance Stroll, Franco Colapinto, Pierre Gasly, Zhou Guanyu and Russell.

Timed Verstappen and Albon were 19th and 20th.