Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsRace weekend

Rosberg tops FP2 from Red Bull pair in Mexico

Nico Rosberg set the fastest time of second practice for the Mexican Grand Prix as Red Bull and Ferrari looked competitive on Friday.

Having suffered a fire on his rear brakes during a tricky FP1, Rosberg enjoyed a more comfortable afternoon session as he set a best time of 1:25.531 on the soft tyre. With the track still low on grip, Red Bull set its fastest times later in the session and it was Daniil Kvyat who was Rosberg's nearest challenger, ending FP2 less than a quarter of a second adrift.

Daniel Ricciardo was third fastest in the other Red Bull, less than 0.1s slower than his team-mate, with Lewis Hamilton ending the session 0.43s adrift of Rosberg. Ferrari finished the session fifth and sixth with Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen respectively as Vettel ended up 0.023s slower than Hamilton.

While he finished FP2 seventh quickest, Valtteri Bottas had a high-speed incident when he lost control of his Williams under braking for Turn 1 at the end of a 1.2km straight. As the car moved to the right, Bottas tried to catch it but speared left and wiped his front wing off agains the wall on the outside of the track before sliding to a stop in the run-off area.

Bottas was able to recover to the pits after his incident, but there were two red flags during a disjointed session. Max Verstappen - who set the pace in FP1 despite cutting the track - crashed after just four minutes as he lost the rear exiting the stadium section and hit the wall on the outside of the final corner, leaving him with just two laps to his name.

Romain Grosjean was the cause of the second red flag, though his stoppage was due to a technical issue as he parked his Lotus in the Esses and the session briefly halted to recover it.

There was some encouragement for McLaren as it finished with both drivers in the top ten as Fernando Alonso finished the session eighth ahead of Jenson Button. It was some extremely welcome running for Button who had missed a lot of FP1 due to a power unit issue.

Track grip remained low, with a number of drivers running of at Turn 1 and Hamilton spinning at Turn 4, before late rain saw the intermediate tyre used for the closing minutes.

AS IT HAPPENED: Mexican Grand Prix FP2

Technical analysis: United States

Scene at the United States Grand Prix

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Pos	Driver	Team	Time	Laps
01	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes	1:21.531	36
02	Daniil Kvyat	Red Bull	1:21.776	27
03	Daniel Ricciardo	Red Bull	1:21.868	28
04	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	1:21.961	33
05	Sebastian Vettel	Ferrari	1:21.984	32
06	Kimi Raikkonen	Ferrari	1:22.399	33
07	Valtteri Bottas	Williams	1:22.721	28
08	Fernando Alonso	McLaren	1:22.993	36
09	Jenson Button	McLaren	1:23.109	25
10	Felipe Massa	Williams	1:23.289	32
11	Nico Hulkenberg	Force India	1:23.290	34
12	Pastor Maldonado	Lotus	1:23.363	24
13	Carlos Sainz	Toro Rosso	1:23.364	41
14	Felipe Nasr	Sauber	1:23.430	39
15	Sergio Perez	Force India	1:23.597	33
16	Romain Grosjean	Lotus	1:23.614	26
17	Marcus Ericsson	Sauber	1:24.533	34
18	Alexander Rossi	Manor	1:25.940	29
19	Will Stevens	Manor	1:26.968	28
20	Max Verstappen	Toro Rosso		2

Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.