Rosberg takes first place in second session Mexican GP

F1 Grand Prix, GP Mexico, Autódromo Hermanos Rodriguez

Nico Rosberg took top spot in the second session of the Mexican Grand. He made it a Mexican Mercedes sandwich with Kvyat second, Ricciardo thirth and Hamilton fourth, all four within half a second.

The second session started in much dryer conditions, with everybody immediately on slick tyres, mostly medium compounds... Tyre wear is very low on this circuit due the low grip levels and new track surface, very comparable to Sochi last year. Due to this, it looks like the soft tyre will be the preferred tyre during the race.

Times immediately improved from the bat, with both Alonso and Raikkonen setting equal times to the one Max Verstappen set, without cutting the corner.

Speaking of the latter, Max was the first driver to crash on the circuits 5 minutes into the session, causing a red flag. He lost the rear in turn 16 at the exit of the stadium, and planted the left side into the barrier, breaking front suspension.

It took 7 minutes to clear the car and debris. At this point everybody improves and the top spot switch hands very fast. Even Perez, the local favorite and hero, briefly held it.

Bottas was the next driver to make a damaging error, although he was very lucky. His rear broke out when he braked at the end of the pit straight, spinning at very high speed, around 300-350 kph. He somehow managed to only break off the front wing in the barrier and was able to limp back to the pits.

Drivers up and down the grid struggle for grip, with Hamilton spinning around on track and Vettel struggling to keep his car out of the wall when entering the pits. Even when cars stay on track, they always look nervous. It's clear the track is not yielding any comfortable amount of grip.

Threatening rain clouds closed in on the track around a third into the session. Most drivers switched at that point to the softer compound to have some laps in, in case that it would start to rain again. This softer tyre seems far superior, being around 2 seconds faster. Force India initially topped the time charts with Hulkenberg, before Mercedes took over by putting Rosberg first and Hamilton second. Vettel is a distant third at 0.8s. The latter will eventually half that deficit.

Down to the second half of the session, traditionally filled in for practicing the long runs, the rain arrived at the track at turn 2 but quickly went further over the track. However, it was limited to a few drops so it did not further affect the grip levels. Red Bull in the meanwhile made a late run on the softs and split the Mercedes duo.

Grosjean caused the second red flag of the day when he had to park the car in the run off area with probably a broken clutch. The car quickly got cleared and green flag was given after a few short minutes. 10 minutes later, his teammate Maldonado is forced to pit due a loss of power. He did rejoined in the final stages however.

Bottas underlined how slippery conditions still were by running wide and knocking over the bollard at the pit entry.

In the last 10 minutes, the lingering rain finally started to intensify. It did not had any influence anymore on the time charts, and only disrupted the long runs mildly.