Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel turned a few heads in Mexico on Friday by setting the fastest time of a 1:19.790 during afternoon practice at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez in Mexico.
Vettel was just 0.004 seconds faster than Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton. Both drivers turned their best times on the supersoft tires.
Hamilton’s teammate Nico Rosberg was third fastest, four tenths of a second adrift, while Vettel’s teammate Kimi Raikkonen rounded out the top four. The first Red Bull in afternoon practice was Daniel Ricciardo, back in fifth, while Max Verstappen lost a lot of track time in the morning session when a small fire broke out due to overheating brakes on his machine. Nico Hulkenberg was sixth fastest, despite setting his best time on the soft tires on his Force India.
The track has been gaining grip all weekend, with Hamilton topping the Friday morning with just a 1:20.914 on the medium tires. Vettel was just 0.079 seconds behind him, although his best time then came on the soft tires.
Both sessions were run relatively incident free, although a brief red flag flew in the morning session when the front wing of Felipe Nasr’s Sauber disintegrated after he bounced over a curb. Toro Rosso's Daniil Kvyat broke down right at the end of the afternoon session.
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