George Russell was feeling on top of the world in the high altitude setting of Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez after finishing fastest in Friday's two practice sessions for the Mexican Grand Prix.
Having sat out FP1 in favour of Nyck de Vries' last outing with the team before his move to AlphaTauri next season, Russell put in the fastest lap of the say in the second practice.
Although most drivers were required to run FP2 on a test programme for Pirelli's 2023 prototypes, Russell was one of five drivers allowed to spend half the extended session on this year's tyres.
His time of 1:19.970s on a set of softs was over eight tenths quicker than Yuki Tsunoda on the same compound, and 1.5s quicker than his Mercedes team mate Lewis Hamilton running the test tyres.
"It’s probably one of, if not our best Friday of the year," Russell told the media in the paddock after the end of the day's track activity. "The pace was relatively strong, but we know the challenges at this circuit.
"For qualifying, the difficulty will be to get the tyres in the right window for the single lap run. And on Sunday, it will be difficult to manage temperatures for the engine and for the brakes.
Although Russell and Hamilton have picked up a number of podiums in 2022, they're still chasing that elusive first win of the season. With only three races remaining, they're running out of time to do it.
“I’d like to think a podium is definitely possible," he said. “Between the two of us we’ve got 14 podiums, so that’s absolutely what we’ll be going for.
"But not having the normal FP2 running where you get to understand the long run [and] the consecutive laps of your rivals, it’s going to be difficult to know.
“We can soon get into a lot of trouble if the temperature is a bit hotter or a bit cooler," he explained. "We find ourselves having to manage everything on Sunday.
"We take some very useful learnings about tyre temperature management for next year and will be working hard overnight as it's not going to be a straightforward weekend for sure, but positive learnings for us today."
Hamilton is particularly motivated to win this weekend. Having finished in second place last week in Austin, he is seeking to extend a perfect record of winning at least one race every season since his debut in 2007.
“I feel good," he said, sounding every bit as upbeat as Russell. "I feel really, really good. I generally had a really good session today.
"I really enjoyed driving around the track," he continued. "The car is feeling better and better as we work more through it, and we understand it more.
“We had the tyre test at the end [which] was just reconnaissance laps, like practice, practice, practice," he added. "So I don’t know were we stand compared to the others, because everyone is on different programmes.
"Obviously George was on a different programme because he missed FP1, but I just focused on mine and it feels good."
But the problem with this year's Mercedes has been its lack of consistency from session to session, leaving Hamilton wary about his prospects for qualifying and Sunday's race.
“I have no idea. You never know with this car. Tomorrow morning it could slap me in the face and not be happy, but I hope that’s not the case.
"Of course we will do plenty of work tonight to see if we can etch ourselves a little bit further forward," he pledged.
However it hadn't been entirely straightforward for the team today, as chief race engineer Andrew Shovlin explained.
"We had a bit of a messy first session as we were bumping into a few limits on system temperatures, but we managed to get that much better under control in the second session.
"From what we can tell the car is working well on both single lap and long run. The balance isn't perfect so we've got areas to work on overnight, but a reasonable start at what is normally a very challenging circuit."
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