Russell says Mexico City’s tight Friday running suggests qualifying “can go any way”

By Vancouver Television Sports Desk

George Russell said the “competitive order can go any way” after a very close opening day at the Mexico City Grand Prix, pointing to how tightly matched the top teams looked during Friday running. Speaking after the on-track action, the Mercedes driver said the close front-end gap implied Qualifying “can go any way,” adding that he wants to “pull the lap out when it matters” when the session shifts from learning pace to delivering on one attempt.

Russell’s Friday began with reduced track time. Many teams, including Mercedes, used a rookie in the first hour of practice, which temporarily moved Russell out of his seat and put reserve driver Fred Vesti in the car for that period. Russell later worked his way back onto familiar footing and completed the rebound performance in FP2.

In FP2, Russell posted a lap time of 1m 17.933s to finish third. The result left him just 0.003s behind McLaren’s Lando Norris and roughly a tenth adrift of the pace-setter, Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc. The narrow margins underscored Russell’s view that the field is closely packed at Mexico City, where small changes can decide top positions.

Russell attributed much of Mexico’s challenge to conditions that are harder to manage than at higher-grip venues. “Always coming to Mexico, [there are] challenges with the altitude,” he said, before explaining that a key difference this season is that teams have generally been running high downforce at all tracks because of the technical environment created by the SM that opens at both the rear and the front on straights.

He said that shift affects how teams set up for Mexico’s lower-grip characteristics: typically, he described, teams used to switch to their maximum downforce from medium or low downforce when arriving in Mexico, whereas this year many approaches have remained closer to maximum downforce throughout. “Coming to Mexico, it’s even lower grip than we’re used to,” Russell added, also noting turbo lag as an additional factor that contributes to how tight the racing feels between the leading cars.

Russell also pointed to Ferrari as the team to watch on Friday pace. He said it was “fair to say Ferrari are looking strongest at the moment,” and referenced that Leclerc “didn’t properly finish his lap” while also noting “Lewis [Hamilton] had the issue.” Despite that, Russell insisted that those Friday indicators should not be treated as a guarantee heading into Qualifying, arguing that the balance of performance remains capable of changing in Q3 and beyond.

Mercedes Deputy Team Principal Bradley Lord echoed Russell on the special nature of the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez, while outlining what Mercedes still needs to work through before the final qualifying phases. Lord described Friday as “solid,” though “not spectacular,” and highlighted multiple sources of complexity around the car’s thermal management and power delivery.

Lord said the team is facing “challenges” including PU cooling and brake cooling, along with boost management with the turbo system at a venue where maintaining confidence over different driving phases is demanding. He also specifically pointed out an additional constraint: “with these turbos now that we don’t have an MGU-H to help us out with that as we have done for the last few years,” linking the circuit’s demands to how the car must be managed through the lap.

In the final part of his remarks, Lord said Mercedes has already “answered a few of those questions” regarding pace across both single-lap performance and longer-run ability. He added that the team is aiming to compete for pole and the front rows, and believes it has the “potential” to be in that battle. Lord said the priority now is to analyse the data and identify the best compromise for Saturday and Sunday: “now we’ve got to take the right steps to make sure we can deliver on that potential tomorrow.”