Verstappen, Lawson Investigated After Mexican GP Practice Collision
NXTbets Pro | Published On: October 31, 2026
Verstappen-Lawson collision
Max Verstappen and Liam Lawson collided in second practice for the Mexican Grand Prix in the stadium section at Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, and the contact quickly turned the session into a problem for both cars. Debris scattered across the track, officials brought out a brief red flag and both machines came away damaged. The FIA stewards summoned Verstappen and Lawson after the session and placed both drivers under investigation. Verstappen finished fifth in FP2, 0.311 seconds behind Charles Leclerc, while Lawson placed ninth.
Verstappen had already lost one practice run, skipping FP1 before returning for FP2. He did not hide his view of the incident after the session. Verstappen said Lawson’s move was “not very smart” and added that Lawson should have acted “a little bit smarter” while fighting for his seat. Red Bull boss Laurent Mekies took the same hard line from the team side, calling the collision “very, very unnecessary” and saying the crew would need to repair the car overnight. The sequence left Red Bull with work to do before the next track action and put the stewards at the center of the day’s main flashpoint.
Leclerc pace
Charles Leclerc owned Friday’s pace in Mexico. He topped second practice with a best lap of 1:17.827, then closed the day with a clean sweep after also leading first practice. The numbers at the top stayed tight, but Leclerc held the edge all afternoon. Lando Norris finished 0.103 seconds back in FP2 and George Russell was 0.106 seconds adrift, a small gap that still kept Leclerc clear of the field’s nearest challengers. Leclerc’s final margin over Norris and Russell showed how narrow the fight was behind him, yet he still controlled both sessions from the front.
The result also framed the rest of the garage. Leclerc set the benchmark while Hamilton’s afternoon never reached the same rhythm. Leclerc still had the fastest lap of the day, while Hamilton’s engine issue later shifted attention to trouble. In a day packed with interruptions and incidents, Leclerc’s double front-running run stood out as the most stable part of Friday.
Hamilton engine trouble
Lewis Hamilton’s FP2 ended with an engine problem, and his Ferrari stopped on track near Turn 4 before it was recovered. The issue triggered a brief virtual safety car and added another interruption to a session that had already been halted once by the Verstappen-Lawson collision. Hamilton’s car came to a stop after he had taken part in the practice run, and the recovery operation brought the track back under control after the stoppage.
That left Friday practice with two separate trouble spots, one from contact and one from mechanical failure. The red flag came after the collision in the stadium section, and the virtual safety car followed Hamilton’s stoppage near Turn 4. Between the two, the session never settled into a long, uninterrupted run of laps for the drivers trying to fine-tune their cars at Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez. Ferrari still had Leclerc on top of the timing sheets, but Hamilton’s engine issue showed how quickly the afternoon could shift from pace work to damage control.
