Verstappen completes Friday double in Mexican Grand Prix practice

Max Verstappen continued his strong from first practice to comfortably top the second session ahead of the Mexico City Grand Prix for Red Bull.

After topping the first 60-minute session on Friday at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, Verstappen clocked a 1:18.686 to beat Lando Norris to the fastest time to head into Saturday favourite for pole position and the win on Sunday.

A few sprinkles of rain impacted the start of the session, although it was not severe enough to force anyone to switch to Intermediates, as Charles Leclerc, Valtteri Bottas and Sergio Perez rounded out the top five, with Lewis Hamilton seventh for Mercedes having been 11th quickest in the first session.

At the beginning of the session, Norris briefly went quickest on the prototype Pirelli test tyres before Verstappen quickly usurped him to top spot on a 1:20.085.

The impressive Williams of Alex Albon - who was less than a tenth behind Verstappen in FP1 - pipped the World Champion by just 0.010s to assume P1 on the board - although the Red Bull soon returned once the Medium C4 compound tyre was bolted on.

This flurry of laps ended with Verstappen fastest on a 1:19.511 with Leclerc his nearest challenger, exactly 0.100s behind with Daniel Ricciardo third for AlphaTauri.

Drivers then began their Soft tyre qualifying simulations, with Oscar Piastri going first for McLaren, vaulting to the top of the times, 0.348s up on Verstappen's Medium effort.

Fernando Alonso did not get to complete his lap during this stage of running owing to a high-speed spin at Turn 10 as Verstappen improved by nearly one second on his Soft tyre run with a 1:18.686.

This would be the session-best time as purple-purple-green sector times on the lap, with Norris going fastest of all in Sector 3 to end 0.119s down in second place.

Leclerc clocked in 0.266s down on Verstappen, with Bottas just 0.003s slower in the Alfa Romeo with Ricciardo, Hamilton and Esteban Ocon also within 0.400s of the benchmark.

The top 10 was rounded out by Piastri and George Russell in the second Mercedes - 0.541s slower than Verstappen.

Trouble for Aston

Following his high-speed spin, Alonso abandoned the Soft tyre running, but finished slowest of all 20 drivers as Aston Martin team-mate Lance Stroll encountered a strange problem.

The team could not get the left-front wheel off the car delaying him, although the AMR23 was able to return to the track - but he was 18th fastest.

Carlos Sainz - following his hydraulic problem in FP1 - was 11th, with Yuki Tsunoda 12th in his first action of the weekend following Isack Hadjar taking his AT04 for FP1.

Zhou Guanyu, Albon, Nico Hulkenberg, Pierre Gasly and Logan Sargeant followed as Kevin Magnussen sandwiched the two Aston Martin's for Haas in 19th - the slowest driver who completed a Soft tyre run after reassuming the VF-23 from the impressive Oliver Bearman in first practice.