Round 20 of the 2023 FIA Formula 1 World Championship commenced with practice on Friday as teams prepared for Sunday's 71-lap Mexico City Grand Prix at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez.

Oliver Bearman, a member of the Ferrari Driver Academy and a four-time race winner in the 2023 FIA Formula 2 Championship, made his Formula 1 grand prix debut in FP1 - the 18-year-old from Great Britain utilizing the first of the team's two FP1 mandatory rookie slots - with his next outing set for Abu Dhabi next month. Kevin Magnussen stepped aside on this occasion with Bearman taking over the Dane's VF-23 for the hour-long practice session.

Bearman kicked off his on-track duties running the prototype C4 compound - each car on Friday allocated two sets to run as part of Pirelli's 2024 tire development program. With eight-laps banked, Bearman followed up with a baseline 15-lap outing on the P Zero White hard rubber. A final eight-lap qualifying simulation on the Red soft tires wrapped up Bearman's FP1 - on which he set his fastest lap of 1:21.132 to place P15 and top rookie from the five teams using the morning session to run drivers eligible to participate.

On the other side of the garage, team regular Nico Hulkenberg ran an identical FP1 tire program. The German clocked a best lap of 1:20.968 on the softs - good for P12 on the timesheet at the checkered flag.

FP2 saw the return of Kevin Magnussen - starting out with a short stint on the prototype C4 tire, immediately followed by a run on the standard mediums. Magnussen's quickest lap of the session, a 1:20.112 (P19) came on the soft rubber - a high-fuel run on the same compound closing out his afternoon's run plan. Hulkenberg's quali sim netted a best effort of 1:19.535 (P15) - also on the softs, having started out matching Magnussen's tire plan. Hulkenberg wrapped his day at track with a high-fuel outing on his earlier set of medium tires.

Oliver Bearman: "My first goal was to have a clean session and we did that, so that was the main thing. Secondly, I got up to speed quite fast, I had confidence in the car - it was my first time on the soft tires, my first time doing a long run - and I'll do better the second time, but for my first FP1 I'm happy. The thing that surprised me was how much quicker you arrive at Turn 1 on a quali sim, compared to the race. The guys have given me pointers throughout, especially because the track is so unique due to the altitude. It was over so fast, but I'm going to be back on the sim preparing for Abu Dhabi."

Kevin Magnussen: "The pace didn't look too good. I didn't do a long run on the mediums, only on the softs, and they wore out very quickly and had a lot of graining, so that wasn't too easy. We were checking to see if the softs could be used in the race, but it doesn't look like it. It's often hard to predict, even after Friday, where we'll stack up, but I didn't learn too much today having only one session, hopefully I can get a feel of the other compounds tomorrow."

Nico Hulkenberg: "It was a challenging day. Obviously, coming to Mexico each year we have the same challenge with the thin air, it has some pretty significant side effects. It didn't feel too good today and the timesheets also don't look too good so there's some homework for us to do to find some performance overnight. We've had two solid sessions of work, progress, and exploring things, so that was definitely a positive."

Guenther Steiner, Team Principal: "It looks like our heaviest downforce package is just not enough for here, we've struggled in the slower sectors because of the thin air at this altitude. It's one of these things, we'll work on it for next year - so that our high downforce package works here as well. On a positive note, Oliver Bearman did a good job this morning and got a lot of laps in. He didn't put a foot wrong, so we're very happy with what he did for the team."

Check out our Friday gallery from Mexico City here.