26/10/2024
NEWS STORY
Round 20 of the 2024 FIA Formula 1 World Championship began with Friday practice at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, Mexico City as teams prepared for Sunday's 71-lap Mexico City Grand Prix.
FP1 proved more crucial than normal with the afternoon's second practice session, FP2, being extended to a 90-minute run time exclusively for Pirelli prototype tire testing ahead of the 2025 season.
MoneyGram Haas F1 Team drivers Nico Hulkenberg and Kevin Magnussen optimized their track time in FP1, despite two red flag stops, to run a set of the Pirelli P Zero White hard tires and a set of the Red softs each. Magnussen's running on the softs was compromised with traffic, the Dane recording a 1:19.335 lap on the compound for P14. Hulkenberg showcased the potential in the VF-24 with a clean lap for the German netting P5 (1:18.904).
FP2 saw the team follow a specific program established by Pirelli - Hulkenberg and Magnussen running the baseline and option sets of the C4 compound - with a performance run and a long run to help validate tire information with each team running the same number of laps and same quantity of fuel based on the type of run.
MoneyGram Haas F1 Team ran a total of 109 laps on Friday across FP1 and FP2 - Magnussen (57), Hulkenberg (52).
Nico Hulkenberg: "It was a bit of a different and unique Friday in that sense, but the car felt pretty positive, and I was competitive in FP1, while Kevin was very competitive in FP2. If we put it together, it looks like we can fight around the top 10. We'll now try to clean up the set-up and try to find a bit more performance. We take last week's momentum into here but it's a different track with different conditions, so we need to work for it and earn it."
Kevin Magnussen: "It was hard as you can't read too much into FP2, but it didn't seem bad so that's the positive. The car felt good and we made improvements from FP1 to FP2, when we were running on test tires, so we can hope the best for tomorrow. I think it's still very tight out there, we weren't the fastest midfield car in FP2, but I think the update seems to be working. In Mexico, here compared to last year with the cooling, it's a very big difference, it's much better this season. That's a good feeling and hopefully we can be in the fight for points."
Ayao Komatsu, Team Principal: "Friday was a bit different compared to normal of course with FP2 being an in-session Pirelli tire test. Most of our learning came from FP1 so the feedback from drivers and what we see on the data is we have a bit to improve, but we changed the car for FP2 a little bit. Some of the changes we need to analyze, but the main thing is that FP3 is going to be critical. FP2, with different compound testing, it's very difficult to learn precisely from. We're not in terrible shape but we've got a bit more work to do, so we're focused on FP3 now."
Check out our Friday gallery from Mexico City here.