HIGHLIGHTS: Watch the action from a busy first practice session at the Mexico City Grand Prix

It was a good start to the Mexico City Grand Prix weekend for Ferrari as Carlos Sainz topped the timesheets of the first practice session at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez ahead of team mate Charles Leclerc.

Sainz set a time of 1m 20.707s, to lead Leclerc, in second, by 0.046s. They were closely followed by the Red Bull duo of Sergio Perez and Max Verstappen in third and fourth, respectively, with Lewis Hamilton in fifth and Fernando Alonso in sixth.

There were five 'rookie' drivers taking part in FP1, with Liam Lawson taking the place of Yuki Tsunoda for AlphaTauri, Logan Sargeant replacing Alex Albon for Williams, Jack Doohan making his race weekend debut for Alpine – swapping in for Esteban Ocon – with Nyck de Vries sitting in for George Russell at Mercedes and Pietro Fittipaldi taking the wheel of Kevin Magnussen’s Haas.

FP1: Sainz leads Ferrari 1-2 as Mexico City weekend gets under way

It was however a tough session for the young racers, as while Doohan’s practice was cut short by a power unit issue, Fittipaldi and Lawson both brought out the red flags, having stopped on track with mechanical issues, with latter bringing a premature end to FP1.

Click on the video player above to relive the action from FP1 from Mexico ahead of the second practice session later today at 1600 local time.