The slippery track surface at the Hermanos Rodriguez circuit again affected the second free practice session, with several cars going off track, with light rain coming in towards the end. Topping the time sheet was Nico Rosberg (1.25.531) in the Mercedes, ahead of the Red Bull duo of Daniil Kvyat (1.21.776) and Daniel Ricciardo (1.21.868.) Next up were the Ferraris, fifth and sixth with Sebastian Vettel (1.21.984) and Kimi Raikkonen (1.22.399.) After working on performance in the first part of the session, both drivers then focused on long runs, which produced encouraging results, before a final stint on Intermediates when the track was wet.
Kimi Raikkonen: “It was quite a tricky day, the layout of the track is ok but the new surface was very slippery. The cars were sliding around and sometimes you felt more like being in rallying than in Formula One! The tires are a bit on the conservative side but it’s the same for everybody. We knew since the beginning that because of the altitude and the thin air, the speeds would have been high, I think everybody was running full downforce; but I would prefer to have the usual amount of downforce. Obviously, as we do more and more laps, track conditions will improve and the surface will grip out, but I’m sure it will still be more tricky than other races. In the second session during the long run it was raining a bit and I didn’t want to risk anything, so I took it easy every time there were drops coming down. Tomorrow we still have time to work on the car for a better set up and see how it goes. We’ll try to make the best out of it.”
Sebastian Vettel: “It was an interesting day, the circuit was very slippery. It has very low grip, I think everybody struggled to keep the car on the track. Surprisingly the speed was low overall, I was hoping that the fast corners were a bit quicker. Hopefully with more rubber on the track it should get quite a bit better. It was amazing to see how many spectators there were already on Friday, and it’s also kind of unique to enter a sort of stadium when you look left and right and see this many people are there… And then the big grandstands, you drive through them! It’s a bit like Singapore, just bigger, and there is a great feeling. I think we can be reasonably happy with how the day went, but I’am sure we can still improve. Unfortunately the rain stopped our long run in the end, but so everyone was affected the same way. Nevertheless I am sure we can do improvements for tomorrow and we should be in a good place.”
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