Can Mercedes find an answer to Red Bull’s imposing Mexico F1 pace?

The F1 world championship leader finished second practice 0.424s quicker than Hamilton to lay down a strong marker on the opening day of track action in Mexico on Friday afternoon. 

Red Bull were widely regarded as the favourites coming into the event given the strengths of its car and engine package at the higher-altitude venue in the past. But the level of Verstappen’s dominance in FP2 will leave Mercedes concerned whether it can turn things around in time for qualifying. 

Mercedes had held a narrow edge in the morning but it is understood that, as they did during opening practice in Austin, both Valtteri Bottas and Hamilton were running higher power modes compared to Red Bull. 

FP2 was a totally different story. Verstappen was in complete control throughout and seemed to justify exactly why Red Bull had been given the pre-event label as the team to beat. 

The Dutchman held a comfortable margin over the rest of the field, including home hero Sergio Perez, whose best lap of FP2 only got him within 0.570s of his teammate as he slotted in behind the two Mercedes. 

Both championship contenders set their best laps at almost the same time when track conditions were at their peak in FP2, but Hamilton, running slightly earlier, endured a scruffy session. 

Hamilton didn’t manage to get a representative lap time on the board for the first half of second practice due to a combination of traffic frustrations, a big lock up at Turn 1, and a lap time deletion due to double waved yellow flags. 

The seven-time F1 world champion put Mercedes’ pace deficit to Red Bull down to his car lacking downforce. 

“The car’s generally been feeling OK,” said Hamilton. “We’ve not really had any major issues and I think we are giving it everything we’ve. 

“They’re just quicker than us at the moment. We've got no real concerns. We are just chipping away at our set up and just trying to improve it.

“But we’re lacking downforce, which is definitely probably why we have the half second difference between us.” 

Hamilton’s teammate Bottas conceded Mercedes would need to extract more pace from its car if it is going to be in the hunt for pole position. 

“They definitely seem quicker today,” the Finn said. “At least on the single lap, they have really strong pace on the soft tyre. So yeah, we need to find time if we want to want to fight for the pole.”

Is there any way back for Mercedes? 

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff admitted Mercedes’ one-lap struggles were genuine after the team experimented with several different set-up directions. 

“There was never such a happy place for us in terms of car performance,” Wolff explained. 

“We don’t seem to find the sweet spot, so we are chasing various directions today. On a positive note, our engine is performing well. That was a little bit of a gap in the years before, that’s fine.

“So I think for us, it’s about doing the best possible job, and maybe that is difficult with Max’s performance, simply said.”

Trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin said: “It’s clear there is a bit of time to find to Max on the single lap but we've got a few balance issues to fix so hopefully we can close that gap a little." 

Time also needs to be found on the long runs, though a direct comparison between Mercedes and Red Bull is skewed by Bottas and Hamilton completing their race simulations using both the soft and hard tyres, while Verstappen conducted his on the mediums. 

Some consolidation may come from Bottas ending the day with the fastest long run time on the hards, albeit only a tiny 0.008s clear of Verstappen, whose best medium-shod lap came after double the length of the Mercedes driver’s stint.

It is expected that teams will favour the medium and hard tyres for Sunday’s race, which may give Mercedes some hope. 

“The long run picture is a bit tricky because we were on different tyres to our competition but the balance is reasonable and the hard tyre seemed to be working nicely,” Shovlin added. 

“We didn't come here expecting it to be easy and there is clearly a bit that we need to work on but compared to some of our Mexico Fridays, we've got off to a decent start.” 

Wolff said Mexico City is probably Mercedes’ “weakest” F1 track and pointed out that even during the team’s dominant 2019 campaign, Verstappen still held a half-second buffer in qualifying. 

“In our dominant year in 2019, where we crushed everybody, we lost qualifying here by half a second, if I’m correct,” he said. “So it’s probably the weakest of all our tracks, with Monaco.”

So will Mercedes ultimately be left facing a race of damage limitation? 

“Yes,” Wolff replied. “We can still have a very solid result with our two drivers in terms of the constructors’ championship. 

“As for Lewis, you’ve seen in Austin that we started P2 and we were in the lead of the race. We simply didn’t win because we only had one driver up there against the two Red Bulls. 

“If this was the other way around this time I think we can fight for the victory as well.”