Sergio Pérez landed in his home Grand Prix with a clear goal: to win the Mexican Grand Prix. Checo, although he finished FP1 in third position, traced the record of his teammate and reigning world champion, Max Verstappen, stopping the clock at 1:20.827 .
In FP2 he would fall to fifth place, although it was not a representative training session, since they rolled with 2023 tires, in a session converted into a Pirelli test.
The one from Red Bull Racing, once the first two free tests were over, placed Ferrari and Mercedes as its two great rivals in the fight for victory.
“Ferrari is showing strong, as well as Mercedes, so we will have a tough battle in qualifying,” said the Red Bull driver at the end of Friday’s session, in which he completed 56 laps in total.
Checo indicated that the second session was totally useless in order to prepare for qualifying, since they will not fit the same tires, and he entrusts everything to the third free practice session, which will be held in the morning on Saturday.
“The tire test meant losing FP2, but it was like that for everyone. In FP1 we had a good pace and we seemed to be competitive,” he said.
“It has been a difficult day to understand [the behavior of the car], as is usual in Mexico with altitude,” he explained, since the Autodromo Hermanos Rodríguez is located at more than 2,000 meters of altitude.
“It was very easy to make mistakes in these conditions, so overall I think we’ve had a good day. I think we’ve caught up pretty quickly and picked up the pace, so hopefully tomorrow will be pretty easy.”
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