All in all, the opening day of track running at the 2024 Mexico Grand Prix was a frustrating affair for pretty much everyone – except, arguably, Ferrari.

The Scuderia did lose much of FP1 when Ollie Bearman was driving Charles Leclerc’s SF-24, thanks to Alex Albon crashing into the 19-year-old when coming across him in the elongated Esses complex. But when it comes to the times that matter (and there where very few of them to be found on Friday) Ferrari at least showed very well.

Pirelli’s 2025 tyre test took over FP2, with five teams (McLaren, Mercedes, Aston Martin, Ferrari and Sauber) set to get an extra 30 minutes of running for running rookie drivers in FP1. But this was ruined by George Russell’s big FP2 crash, which put a massive dent in Mercedes’ day given it had started so well with the Briton leading the opening session.

Having had poor weather frustrate much of its other tyre testing at non-race events in 2024, Pirelli motorsport boss Mario Isola was left wondering if organising a test at Lourdes was the only way to get its luck to change on such things.

At Red Bull, an engine issue aboard Max Verstappen’s car meant his day was pretty much pointless. His title rival Lando Norris’s McLaren squad therefore had the smoothest run of the frontrunners, but then had its Right of Review petition into his Austin penalty rejected well after darkness had fallen on Friday.

Here then, is everything we learned at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez on the opening day.

Bearman was one of five FP1 rookie drivers in action, but his outing was cut short by a crash with Albon

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

The story of the day

The most interesting element of FP1 was set to be the rookie drivers aboard the cars above, before one of them – Bearman – was involved in one of the day’s two big crashes.

This was after a first FP1 red flag had occurred when signage from a bridge running across the track’s main straight had been collected by Verstappen (who suffered minor floor damage) and Andrea Kimi Antonelli in Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes.

Albon lost the rear of his Williams as he lifted off coming across the slower-moving Bearman in Leclerc’s Ferrari at Turn 9 during the early stages. He then smashed into the Ferrari’s left-front corner and did even more damage to his own Williams in the barriers at Turn 10 – such was the speed Albon spun at – that he later missed FP2 entirely.

Russell topped FP1 with a 1m17.998s ahead of Sainz in the remaining Ferrari by 0.317s. Red Bull’s session was marred by Verstappen reporting “something [was] wrong” with his engine and stopping his running five minutes early.

On the 2024 mediums, which in our assessment only concerns Ferrari and Mercedes, the scarlet squad led a not very close comparison of 1m21.357s vs 1m22.371s

In FP2, that engine issue – said to be a “leak somewhere”, by Red Bull motorsport advisor Helmut Marko – reoccurred aboard the world champion’s RB20. That was even after Red Bull thought it had solved the issue during the break between practice sessions and around the long red-flag caused by Russell’s crash.

Verstappen therefore only completed four laps in FP2. Russell only did that total too, having lost the rear of his W15 at Turn 8 when he appeared to drag his right-rear too far over the inside kerbs and so his car bottomed out and he was pitched into a spin that ended smashed sideways into the Turn 9 barriers.

These took nearly 25 minutes to rearrange and so the added 30 minutes of FP2 for the Pirelli test was lost. Either side of the stoppage, Sainz improved the first-place benchmark from 1m17.809s to 1m17.699s and was trailed by Oscar Piastri’s McLaren by 0.178s.

Russell suffered his second heavy crash in just over a week after his qualifying shunt in Austin

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

The lost time meant while the rookie-running teams did get out on the weekend’s medium tyres (having used a combination of 2024 C4s and C5s, 2025 versions of those compounds, plus a prototype C6 only given to Williams and RB for the Pirelli test) they could only do so for a handful of laps at the end.

Norris did use his mediums to rise to fifth in the final FP2 order, while the five rookie-runners were the only drivers able to conduct practice starts in the session.

The decision over McLaren’s Right of Review then took over as the main story on Friday night, as, nearly six hours after the hearing with Austin stewards commenced, the decision was announced that it had been rejected.

This centred on how the stewards felt McLaren’s argument that an error had been made in Norris being penalised as the attacking car when he was so far ahead of Verstappen that he became the defender when the Dutchman shot his Red Bull to the Turn 12 apex – critical under the current racing guidelines – was “unsustainable”.

What the (limited) data tells us

FP2 long-run data is usually fraught with peril when it comes to interpreting how the teams have stacked up in opening practices, but given the Pirelli test dominated the second session on Friday it means they must be treated with even more caution than usual.

Although the run plans Pirelli mandated means we can know how much fuel was aboard each car during a long run on some 2024 tyres (we’re only looking at the top four teams here), the drivers needing to adjust their approaches and deal with jumping between new and old tyre constructions means they cannot be considered fully representative.

The run plans for the Pirelli test were two performance fliers over five laps with 20kg of fuel aboard for each car, plus two 10-lap stints with 100kg – the second of which were slightly shortened as a result of the red flag (from 12 to eight).

Norris, on the Pirelli test tyres, was one of the few drivers to make it out on the mediums late in FP2

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

On the 2024 mediums, which in our assessment only concerns Ferrari and Mercedes, the scarlet squad led a not very close comparison of 1m21.357s vs 1m22.371s. Leclerc’s second Pirelli long-run (after he’d done a stint on the 2025 mediums) had him ahead of Hamilton by an average of 1.014s.

In other positive news for Ferrari, and this is important given Pirelli said “teams will have to prepare their cars for qualifying and the race in the space of two hours: FP1 on Friday and FP3 on Saturday” in its press release explanation of how the tyre test would work, Sainz edged the long runs all of top teams completed at FP1’s end.

His average on the hards came in at 1m22.150s, which is another healthy 1.061s ahead of Russell’s best for Mercedes (Antonelli was still doing staccato runs at this stage so not assessed). This points to a fairly hefty fuel discrepancy between Ferrari and Mercedes at that point in the opening session.

Given the aberration of the Pirelli test in FP2 this weekend, extra premium is now placed on nailing set-ups in Saturday’s FP3 offering, as well as gathering extra long-run information

McLaren was third-best on the hards with a 1m23.332s, while Verstappen’s woes meant Perez’s FP1-concluding long-run represented Red Bull’s entry at 1m23.392s.

Looking at the FP2 efforts on the 2024 C5s (the softs used for the rest of this weekend), McLaren edged Red Bull with a 1m21.800s from Norris versus Perez’s 1m22.353s.

Given the aberration of the Pirelli test in FP2 this weekend, extra premium is now placed on nailing set-ups in Saturday’s FP3 offering, as well as gathering extra long-run information. Any team that has a crash in the ultra-low-downforce, thin-air challenge here – or has any more reliability maladies – will be in serious trouble.

A truncated day of running, but the early signs are showing positively for Ferrari

Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images

Watch highlights as England suffer defeat to Germany in an international friendly at Wembley where the teams that contested the Euro 2022 final return to the same stage to deliver a seven-goal thriller.

REPORT: England 3-4 Germany

Available to UK users only.

MMA Fighting has a live stream watch party for Saturday’s UFC 308 event, which takes place at Etihad Arena in Abu Dhabi. In the highly anticipated main event, Ilia Topuria puts the UFC featherweight title on the line for the first time against challenger, and BMF champ Max Holloway.

Join MMA Fighting’s Mike Heck, Jed Meshew, and other special guests to watch along with UFC 308 as the main card happens.

In the co-main event, former middleweight champion Robert Whittaker battles the undefeated Khamzat Chimaev in a five-round bout.

UFC 308 also includes a battle between ranked featherweights Dan Ige and Lerone Murphy, while Magomed Ankalaev and Aleksandar Rakic compete in a potential No. 1 contender bout in the light heavyweight division.

The main card opens with a 185-pound matchup between Shara Magomedov and Armen Petrosyan.

Watch MMA Fighting’s UFC 308 Watch Party beginning at 1:45 p.m. ET / 10:45 a.m. PT.

Wales captain Angharad James says her side failed to show their usual “passion and pride” but reiterated that Morgan’s late goal gives them hope for the return leg in Cardiff on Tuesday.

“It’s disappointing. It wasn’t a performance we wanted but it’s half-time (in the tie),” James said.

“We’ve got the home leg on Tuesday and it’s more important than ever so hopefully we can get a big crowd.

“There are new partnerships that take time to build but there wasn’t the passion or pride we would have liked. We could have given more.

“We will learn from it and we will be better on Tuesday.”

Wales have come close to qualifying for a major tournament for the first time in their last three qualification cycles and Wilkinson believes the players’ huge desire to make history led to them playing “frantically”.

“We played with a franticness that I haven’t seen before and that is where a team that hasn’t quite made it a couple of times, you see that coming out and we are better than that,” she said.

“They want it so much; this is what I mean when I talk about the naivety of the team on occasion, they get stretched because they dive in to tackles when they shouldn’t, they go chasing and then as soon as they connect as a team you see what they can do.”

Wilkinson felt the 2-1 defeat was the most Wales deserved from a game they were favourites to win.

“We are very fortunate it is a home and away series and we get to bring it home now, we have a one goal deficit to make up,” she added.

“I think we were lucky to go in at half-time at 0-0 and I told the players that. This game has to mean something for the growth of our team. I thought they could have scored and made it 3-0 at one point.

“As soon as we started playing our football and had them running after us you saw how many chances we created. We’ve got to look for the positives and we are definitely looking forward to getting home in front of our fans and using that energy to spur the team on.”

Wales improved markedly after substitute Jess Fishlock came on, with Wales’ most-capped player and record goalscorer providing the assist for Morgan’s potentially vital late goal.

However, Wilkinson says Wales cannot use the absence of Fishlock – and cap centurion Sophie Ingle who is out until 2025 after ACL surgery – as excuses.

“We have to look at what we were doing in terms of giving ourselves a chance in Cardiff and we started to put pressure on them and had some opportunities and finally getting the ball in the back of the net gives us a confidence going home that I am pleased about,” Wilkinson added.

“If you don’t have Jess Fishlock on the field she’s a huge miss and the same with Sophie Ingle. It’s a long time (five years) since we were without the pair of them but that is not an excuse, because we have the depth.

“What we were probably lacking was ‘who do you look to when times are tough?’ but the players out on the pitch need to stand tall for Wales.”

ANDREW GILDING admitted he was “concerned all the way through” after upsetting Luke Littler.

Littler, 17, lost for the first time to Goldfinger as he was dumped out of the Dortmund tournament in a 6-4 first-round loss.

2

Gilding, who is 36 years the senior man, was never behind in the contest.

But despite the Nuke managing to draw level at 3-3 and 4-4, it ended up being a shock result.

Although there were some nervy moments for Gilding when the comeback looked to be on.

He said: “Oh yeah, I was concerned all the way through. I know what he’s like, he can really turn it on sometimes.

“I just get up there, throw my darts and hope for the best.”

Teen sensation Littler had lost in the opening round of the World Matchplay in Blackpool and the World Grand Prix in Leicester.

And even though he is the Premier League champion, he will be flying back early to the UK following this surprise defeat.

It also means that there will not be a feisty reunion with German star Ricardo Pietreczko in the second round – the pair clashed in dramatic scenes earlier this year.

CASINO SPECIAL – BEST CASINO WELCOME OFFERS

Gilding, who led 3-0 at one point, made amends for losing to Littler when he was a seed at the last PDC World Darts Championship second round.

He said: “I didn’t expect this, watching how Luke had played lately.
“I am always short of self-belief. I never expect to win a game.

“Especially against Luke and especially as I had an awful cold as well. I am on the tailend of that. I felt awful coming up to this.

“I did say beforehand I wanted to cross him off the list. It was the third time I’d played him. So it’s third time lucky.

“It’s a huge win. The last thing I had expected. Nobody expected this.

“I was thinking about the flights home on Saturday. The way he had played lately was exceptional.

“I was resigned to losing. In practice, I was awful until the last hour but it came together.”

2

Advertisement

Alex Albon chose not to blame Oliver Bearman for their Mexico Grand Prix FP1 clash, and felt that Ferrari told its reserve driver too late that the Williams Formula 1 driver was approaching.

Albon came across Bearman on the run-up to the high-speed sequence of Turns 7-8-9 and lifted off in anticipation of encountering the Ferrari. This caused his FW46 to lose grip and it began to snap, resulting in Albon swiping Bearman at Turn 9 and subsequently ending up in the wall at Turn 10.

In the immediate aftermath, Albon was heard to refer to Bearman as an “idiot” over the radio. However, the Anglo-Thai driver changed his thoughts on the incident.

Instead, he feels that Ferrari could have done more to warn Bearman – running as an FP1 rookie driver for Austin winner Charles Leclerc – of the situation, and that the young Briton was caught out by the faster closing speeds in F1.

“I think he got told, listening to the radio, very late that I was coming up behind him,” Albon said.

“He tried his best to speed up into the two or three high-speed corners, we caught each other at the worst moment on track that you can.

“I think there was a 100km/h difference in terms of speed. I don’t blame myself, but I don’t think it’s all on Ollie.

“I think he could have been told a bit better, and of course he’s new, the closing speeds in F1 are much higher than F2. But it’s not his fault.”

The incident was investigated by the stewards, but deemed to be not worthy of further action; the report stated that “both drivers agreed that Bearman’s positioning was not unreasonable, but was unfortunate as it was close to Albon’s line. Had Bearman been slightly further down the track it would not have resulted in an incident. All parties agreed that it was a racing incident.”

Following the severe damage to his Williams, Albon did not take part in the second practice session as extensive repairs continued throughout the run-time of the session.

Reflecting on the lost running, Albon said that he hoped the use of FP2 as a Pirelli tyre test would mitigate the damage to his weekend, as drivers participating ran with unmarked 2025 prototype tyres.

“Two laps is frustrating – we’ve got a lot of work to do tomorrow,” Albon added.

“But hopefully [FP2 is] less important than a normal weekend, obviously FP2 was a Pirelli test. So in some ways, possibly less learned from other teams because they weren’t running tyres from this year.

“I’m hoping that it just means the lack of track time is less compromising.”