Stoffel Vandoorne’s preparations for his first British Grand Prix started with the young Belgian posting a top ten time in Friday’s first free practice session but the McLaren Honda Formula 1 Team rookie believes there’s more to come as he “explores the car’s limits.”
Despite dropping down the table to sixteenth in Friday’s second session, Vandoorne believes the McLaren-Honda MCL32 is performing well on Silverstone’s fast and demanding corners.
“Today has actually been a pretty good start to our weekend,” said Vandoorne..” Given that this is a long circuit, with a lot of high-speed corners, I think our car has been performing well – I felt pretty comfortable out there.
“As usual, the times in the midfield are very close, so it’ll be the tiniest details that will make a difference during qualifying tomorrow. At the moment, we’re still exploring the car’s limits – particularly in the Becketts section of the lap. I think both Fernando and I had a moment during that part of the lap – just losing the rear on the entry of the final section.
“Fernando and I have been trying a lot of different downforce configurations throughout today’s sessions. Now I think we have a very good idea of what we should run tomorrow – we’ve done a lot of learning on that front.”
