Felix Rosenqvist felt there was more time to be found around the streets of Macau after failing to get the best out of his tyres due to the red flags during first qualifying on Thursday.
The Swede, aiming to make it a hat trick of victories at the legendary event after triumphing in both 2014 and 2015, took his SJM Theodore Racing by Prema machine to third place on Thursday, 0.262 seconds down on pace setter Antonio Felix da Costa.
Should Rosenqvist be victorious on Sunday, he would be the first driver in history to win three consecutive Macau Grand Prix, and he believes he can go faster should conditions allow during Friday’s second qualifying session.
“We waited to go out a bit later, and then there were a lot of red flags,” said Rosenqvist. “We put on new tyres, and I only did one lap on them before it was red-flagged again. After that I went out again but the tyres were dropping off in performance.
“I had a better first sector because I got quite a good slipstream, and I managed to improve by a tenth of a second. But I think there’s a lot more to come.”