George ends Friday running in P13 as Formula One returns to Austin.

George made full use of the hour-long FP1, taking to the track five minutes into the session on a set of Medium tyres.

An early red flag for Antonio Giovinazzi paused the session but the Italian was able to get going again and FP1 resumed with 48 minutes on the clock.

Returning on a fresh set of Mediums, George put in a 1.42.440 to place into P11 before switching to the Soft tyres for the final 30 minutes.

George put in his best time of 1.37.802 to end the morning in P7.

FP2 took a slightly different turn as the entire field took part in the 2023 Pirelli tyre test with an extended 90-minute session.

The Brit slotted into P11 with a 1.40.562 in the early stages before being pushed down into P13 where he remained for the rest of the session.

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George Russell – Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One™ Team Driver

Definitely a unique FP2 session with the tyre test, but good to learn and understand what tyres we will get for next year. Everyone was on slightly different compounds so let's see what we can take away from it in terms of our learning. The upgrades we've brought to the car felt okay so far. FP1 was an odd session today, with some teams looking unexpectedly fast and some other teams that weren't as quick as we expected them to be. With the different FP2 format, we don't know yet what the pecking order will be but so far our car is feeling quite strong, which is promising. I'd like to hope that we will be ahead of the midfield this weekend. We're going to work as hard as possible overnight and try to make sure we will have a fast car.

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