Ricciardo fastest as Vettel, Hamilton hit trouble in Mexico FP2
Daniel Ricciardo emerged fastest in a closely-fought battle at the front of the Formula 1 pack in second practice for the Mexican Grand Prix on Friday afternoon, edging out championship leader Lewis Hamilton by one-tenth of a second.
In a session that saw both Hamilton and fellow title contender Sebastian Vettel both suffer setbacks, Ricciardo was able to stretch the legs of his Red Bull RB13 car to pace the field and throw his hat into the ring for pole on Saturday in qualifying.
Daniel Ricciardo emerged fastest in a closely-fought battle at the front of the Formula 1 pack in second practice for the Mexican Grand Prix on Friday afternoon, edging out championship leader Lewis Hamilton by one-tenth of a second.
In a session that saw both Hamilton and fellow title contender Sebastian Vettel both suffer setbacks, Ricciardo was able to stretch the legs of his Red Bull RB13 car to pace the field and throw his hat into the ring for pole on Saturday in qualifying.
Ricciardo turned in a fastest lap time of 1:17.801 to finish 0.131 seconds clear of Hamilton in the final classification, with the Mercedes driver recovering from an early spin at the exit of Turn 11 that cost him track time while his team checked over his car for damage.
Championship rival Vettel suffered a more peculiar issue when the fire extinguisher in his cockpit burst and began to leak, leaving a white stain across the Ferrari driver's race suit, as well as forcing the team into fitting a replacement for the remainder of the session.
Vettel took P4 overall, one-quarter of a second off Ricciardo's time, slotting in behind Max Verstappen, whose session was ended early with a reported engine problem in the second Red Bull.
Kimi Raikkonen finished fifth-fastest for Ferrari ahead of fellow Finn Valtteri Bottas, who wound up sixth despite being less than half a second shy of Ricciardo's time at the front.
The setbacks for Hamilton, Vettel and Verstappen were not the only major incidents in the session, with a red flag being shown early on after Romain Grosjean suffered a tyre failure on his Haas car, leaving debris across the track.
Stoffel Vandoorne also hit trouble in his McLaren when trying to head out on-track early, but recovered to get out and finish P15, with teammate Fernando Alonso enjoying a less stressful run to seventh place at the head of the midfield.
Sergio Perez took P8 for Force India ahead of Renault's Nico Hulkenberg, while Esteban Ocon rounded out the top 10.
