Carlos Sainz quickest as Ferrari complete 1-2 at Mexican Grand Prix FP1, Charles Leclerc second

Carlos Sainz was quickest in Free Practice 1 at the Mexican Grand Prix on Friday afternoon, as the Ferrari driver set a time of 1:20.707 on soft tyres.

His Monegasque team-mate Charles Leclerc came in 0.046 seconds behind him as the second-fastest of the early runout.

Third was taken by Sergio Perez of Red Bull in his home Grand Prix.

The practice session started after Red Bull accepted their $7 million (£6m) fine for exceeding spending limits for last season’s campaign, something that the Austrian team’s principal Christian Horner ‘begrudgingly’ accepted.

The drivers’ and constructors’ championship had already been decided – both in Red Bull’s favour – so it was little surprise to see teams use the Mexican first practice session as an opportunity to fulfil requirements of bringing in reserve drivers for some testing.

AlphaTaura recruited 20-year-old Liam Lawson, a Red Bull junior, to take over from Yuki Tsunoda. Nyck de Vries was back for Mercedes ahead of his switch to AlphaTauri, in George Russell’s seat. Jack Doohan, Alpine’s academy driver, stepped in for Esteban Ocon, Williams fielded Logan Sargeant, and Pietro Fittipaldi featured for Haas.

Fittipaldi and Zhou Guanyu stopped while out on track midway through the session, which brought a yellow and then a red flag to interrupt the teams’ various efforts.

Fittipaldi had been instructed to pull over ‘immediately’ due to a problem with his power unit, and another power unit fault promptly brought Doohan’s involvement in the session to an end soon after.

Yet another rookie suffered a stoppage when Lawson’s brakes overheated, bringing the second red flag of the session. With flames coming from his car, Lawson exclaimed, “Mate, what the f*** is going on?”

That second red flag meant that there was not enough time to get cars back on track for any more of the session so the teams will now wait for an extended FP2 later on Friday.

The second session will run to 90 minutes in order to give a feel for next season’s Pirelli tyres.