The penultimate triple-header of the 2026 season got underway at the Circuit of the Americas on Friday.

On a fascinating day, the front four teams all looked competitive with a tight battle shaping up over the rest of the weekend. Both George and Kimi ran the update specification introduced in Malaysia, along with the new front-wing seen in FP1 in Singapore.

After a challenging FP1, where both drivers were losing time in the low-speed corners, the team got the W17 into a much happier place balance wise for FP2. That showed on the timing screens with Kimi just half-a-tenth shy of Charles Leclerc's leading effort on the single lap. For George, he was unable to set a representative time having lost his initial Soft tyre effort due to a track limits infringement and then having a moment in sector one on his second effort; that left him P5. The long run picture was complicated by traffic and by the top four teams all using a variety of compounds; nevertheless, it looks like we will be set for a highly competitive race on Sunday.

Kimi Antonelli: We have had an interesting day here at the Circuit of the Americas. We didn't have the best FP1 session, with the car balance not in a great place. We were able to improve that for FP2 though and we took a good step forward. We will now pick through the data overnight and see if we can take another step. We will likely need that if we are to be confident of fighting for victory on Sunday.

Ultimately, it's been an encouraging day for us given the progress we've taken with the update package. We made some good inroads in Singapore, and it is pleasing to see that continue here with both myself and George on the same specification. There is still more for us to do to ensure we're getting the car in the right window consistently and that will be a focus for us heading into FP3.

George Russell: It's been a useful day for us on track as we continue to build our knowledge around our update package. Whilst the car wasn't in a great place in FP1, we made some good improvements for FP2 and definitely moved the car in the right direction. There is still more work to do though, particularly given how strong some of the other teams looked today. I didn't get the most out of the single-lap running either; I lost one lap to track limits and then had a big moment in sector one on the next, so there was more performance there. We'll work hard overnight and see what we can find ahead of tomorrow.

As we expected coming into the weekend, the margins between the top four teams look small. Getting ourselves in the fight at the front will not only be about making improvements with the car overnight but also executing well in qualifying and the race.

Andrew Shovlin: We didn't have a good first session. We were looking to explore a wider set-up window with the update package on both cars, but we were struggling with locking, which was a big limitation in both our single-lap work and the long runs. We repositioned the cars going into the afternoon session and that seems to have put us in a better place. We had fewer balance issues, the car was more predictable, and the lap times improved as a result.

It looks very tight at the front. You wouldn't rule out any of the top four teams having the pace for pole position tomorrow, so we'll continue to pick through what we learned today and see if we can find further improvements overnight.

Check out our Friday gallery from COTA here.