Lewis Hamilton had to park his car midway through the second free practice session at the Mexico City Grand Prix. The Briton hopes it will not seriously affect the rest of the weekend.

Around 30 minutes into FP2, Hamilton reported over the team radio that he had begun to lose power. His race engineer, Carlo Santi, told him to stop his car. The Briton parked the SF-26 on the start-finish straight, which led to a brief Virtual Safety Car period during the session.

Speaking after FP2, Hamilton said: "I think we’re really competitive this weekend as a team. I didn’t get to do the long runs so I have no idea, but I know it’s really hard to overtake here, as you saw with some people out there. They’re still investigating to find out what was wrong, and just praying that everything’s okay.

“I missed a little bit of time in FP1 because we did the rake running. Normally I would have one of the young drivers do FP1 at this track like most people did, but I opted to do it somewhere else."

Hamilton happy with the set-up so far

Despite the issue, Hamilton is positive in terms of how the Ferrari car has felt so far this weekend.

He continued: "Basically I’ve only really had one session because I missed at least half of that session. I don’t think we need to make many changes to the set-up. I’d probably leave it much the same because we were very quick.

"I think I already had a loss of power earlier on in the lap and was still quick. I’ll give it everything tomorrow and just try to do the best with whatever I have," the Ferrari driver concluded.

After FP2, Ferrari has time to fix Hamilton's car and get it ready for the final practice session ahead of qualifying on Saturday. FP3 will begin at 11:30 local time (17:30 local time).