Here's the thing about Friday running at the Mexico City Grand Prix: sometimes bad luck just finds you, and that is exactly what happened to Lewis Hamilton. The Ferrari driver was forced to park his SF-26 early in the second practice session following a power-related issue, restricting him to eleventh on the timesheets.
Before the stoppage cut his day short, Hamilton was feeling genuinely good about the machine. He ended up fourth overall in the earlier running behind pace-setter Charles Leclerc and the Mercedes duo of Kimi Antonelli and Fred Vesti. Ferrari took a different approach to the weekend's opening hour as the only team not to run a rookie, bolting an aero rake onto Hamilton's car for representative laps before he lost valuable track time.
You know that Mexico is a challenge – it is a challenge with the altitude and for the car, for the drivers to find the limit,
"I was feeling really good in the car – it's just my luck," Hamilton said. "I think we did a really good job in getting the set-up in a better place. Just really unfortunate." He admitted the team is still investigating the root cause of the failure and added that he is "praying that everything's okay."
Because of the rake running in the first session and the subsequent breakdown in the second, the Briton feels he has only really completed a single session of meaningful running. He missed out on crucial long runs, leaving him in the dark regarding race pace—a severe handicap at a venue where overtaking is notoriously difficult. Still, he plans to leave the current set-up largely untouched because the pace was undeniably there, noting that he even experienced a loss of power earlier in the lap while remaining quick.
Meanwhile, Ferrari Team Principal Fred Vasseur confirmed the squad will make a decision overnight regarding the necessary fixes ahead of FP3 and Qualifying. Vasseur remained pragmatic despite Leclerc topping both sessions with an advantage that shrank from nearly seven-tenths to 0.103s.
"You know that Mexico is a challenge – it is a challenge with the altitude and for the car, for the drivers to find the limit," Vasseur stated. "It is like it is – it's the same for everybody and we have to do a lot of work tonight to improve the situation."
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