Mexican Grand Prix: Sebastian Vettel edges out Hamilton in FP2

After finishing just behind reigning world champion Lewis Hamilton in Friday's first practice session for the Mexican Grand Prix, Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel topped the time charts during FP2, the first such occurrence for the Maranello outfit since the Belgian Grand Prix last August.

Vettel edged out Hamilton's Mercedes by four thousandths of a second while running on the super-soft compound.

Similarly to the first session, current points leader Nico Rosberg finished well behind his teammate Hamilton, but posted a good enough time for third, just ahead of Vettel's teammate Kimi Raikkonen. The second session represented another struggle for the Red Bull team in terms of raw pace, Daniel Ricciardo posted the fifth-best time, while his teammate Max Verstappen drove to a seventh-place finish in the session. Force India's Nico Hulkenberg split the pair of Red Bull's in the second session with a sixth-place finish.

Raikkonen hit the circuit for the second session with his pedal to the floor, setting the benchmark lap of 1m22.075s on the medium compound. The aforementioned Verstappen got out on track early, seeking to makeup time he seemingly lost during the first session because of a brake fire on his car. 

Racing in front of his hometown crowd, Force India's Sergio Perez suffered a spin out at Turn 5 during the session. Rosberg also ran off the track during his first run of the session. 

Hamilton, however, suffered from no such events, firing out of the paddock to post a lap of 1m20.362s on the soft compound. At the time, it was good enough to place him P1 with a gap of 1.662s. He'd later suffer a lockup at Turn 1, and could be heard over the team radio immediately after saying, "this tire is completely done."

With a fresh set of super-soft tires on his car, the four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel needed only one lap to post a time of 1m19.790s.