During FP1 on friday, alongside 4 other rookies, Robert Shwartzman sat in for Zhou Guanyu at Sauber for the session. This would be the second time this year he has driven in FP1 for Sauber, following the session he did back in Zandvoort for the Dutch Grand Prix.
The young driver completed 18 laps during the session, clocking in a personal best of 1:19.988, placing him in P19. His time was 1.990s behind Mercedes’ George Russell, who topped the charts with a time of 1:17.998. He was 0.9s slower than Valtteri Bottas.
However the session was not smooth for Shwartzman, with two red flags disrupting the session, and a an engineering error on his soft tyre run. The red flags were caused by Mercedes’ rookie Kimi Antonelli running over debris that required cleaning up, as well as a collision between Williams’ Alex Albon and Ollie Bearman, who was driving Leclerc’s Ferrari for the session.
Though this didn’t take away his joy of driving the Sauber C44 around Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez for the first time.
“Well, we didn’t drive much, I think because of the two red flags it compromised quite a lot of driving time, but I still really enjoy it.
“It’s my first time driving here in Mexico, actually the track is really, really cool and nice. I really enjoyed a few laps that I’ve done, overall I’m quite happy.
“Unfortunately for the last run on softs, we got a big compromise because we were having a really short time, because we were also doing some aero tests on the car, so we were really rushing in.
“And we did a mistake from the engineering side that had no DRS on my push laps on softs, so unfortunately that was a bit of a thing, but overall I’m happy because the car felt really nice to drive and it’s always amazing to drive a Formula 1 car.”
The Ferrari Driver Academy graduate completed Formula 2 back in 2021 and is currently a reserve driver for the Scuderia. He’s also a driver under AF Corse competing in the FIA Hypercar World Endurance Championship. It’s been a while since the 25-year-old has driven a Formula one car so it definitely took him some trial and error.
“I think initially I thought the most challenging will be the high speeds, that section, the esses, but from the feeling it actually was really nice, like the sequence where you go left, right, left, right, it was actually really cool.
“So from my side, honestly where I struggled a bit, it was a bit on the braking at T1, T4 a bit, you know, just to get the feeling, because when you don’t drive for quite a while the Formula 1 car, you forget how aggressive it is on brakes and how quick you can stop, so I think that was my main challenge.
“I think a bit of sector one and a bit of traction out of the last part of the section, because here it’s quite a lot of heat on the tyres, so when you come to the end of the lap it seems like, you’re drifting around a bit, so yeah, that’s I think the main things.”
To add to a fairly disappointing session, after the end of FP1 it was announced that Shwartzman was hit with a five-place grid penalty for overtaking under a yellow flag after the Albon-Bearman clash. Despite not being scheduled for another drive in the near future, the stewards still decided to apply the penalty as per usual.
This isn’t the first time this has happened with Jenson Button who came out of retirement for a race, being hit was a three-place grid penalty during the 2017 Monaco Grand Prix weekend when he sat in for Fernando Alonso.
