George Russell put Mercedes at the top of the timesheets during second practice for the Mexico City Grand Prix, with the extended session – featuring more 2023 tyre testing – punctuated by a heavy crash for Charles Leclerc.

As per the United States GP weekend, Friday’s second session at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez was stretched out from 60 to 90 minutes, allowing for plenty of prescribed runs (which included set stint lengths and fuel loads) on the unmarked development Pirelli rubber.

But it was Russell who led the way with an early lap time of 1m 19.970s on 2022-spec soft tyres, given that the regular drivers who sat out FP1 were permitted to run their own programme for the first half of the session to help them make up for lost time (Russell having handed his car to Nyck de Vries).

With Leclerc unharmed, his car cleared away and the barriers repaired, the action resumed shortly after the halfway mark, but there were no changes at the front of the order as drivers worked their way through further tyre tests.

Behind the pace-setting Russell, Yuki Tsunoda and Esteban Ocon also used the current C4 soft as they returned to action, albeit with the AlphaTauri driver some eight-tenths adrift, and the Alpine man more than a second off the pace.

Lewis Hamilton led the pack of cars running solely on the unmarked Pirellis, 1.5s down on his Mercedes team mate, followed closely by the Red Bulls of home favourite Sergio Perez and double world champion Max Verstappen.

Leclerc wound up P7 after his hefty crash, as Ferrari team mate Carlos Sainz, Alfa Romeo’s Valtteri Bottas and the other AlphaTauri of Gasly completed the top 10 positions in overcast but warm conditions.