Verstappen sets pace as McLarens struggle in practice

Max Verstappen has won three of the past four races to close the gap to championship leader Oscar Piastri

Red Bull's Max Verstappen topped Friday practice at the Mexico City Grand Prix while title rivals Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri lagged behind.

Verstappen, who has made up 64 points on championship leader Piastri in the past four races, led Ferrari's Charles Leclerc by 0.153 seconds.

Norris was fourth fastest, behind Mercedes' Kimi Antonelli, and 0.251secs off the pace.

Piastri had a difficult day, slow on both the short and long runs, and ended up 12th fastest, 0.840secs off the pace.

Ferrari's Lewis Hamilton was fifth fastest, ahead of the second Mercedes of George Russell, the Red Bull of Yuki Tsunoda and Fernando Alonso's Aston Martin.

On the race simulation runs later in the session, McLaren's pace was not comparable with Red Bull's as the world champions ran on the soft tyres and the other main contenders on the mediums.

But again Piastri was off the pace - more than 0.5secs on average slower than Norris.

Ferrari, calculating the tyre off-set, said Norris looked "very fast" in a conversation between Leclerc and his engineer Bryan Bozzi over the radio.

And that was despite Piastri being the only McLaren driver to run in both sessions - Norris and Verstappen were among nine other drivers to hand their cars over to rookies.

On the medium tyres, Antonelli set the pace on the long runs, closely matched with Leclerc, with Russell a little behind and Verstappen about 0.5secs off and complaining of a lack of grip that made the car feel like he was "driving on ice".

There were no major incidents, although Williams driver Alex Albon ended up 19th overall after brushing the wall on the exit of the final corner on his qualifying simulation lap.

More to follow.

Charles Leclerc was fastest in first practice - with rookie Antonio Fuoco, who was driving team-mate Lewis Hamilton's car, in last