Nico Hülkenberg felt it was a standard practice day at Silverstone on Friday, with the Renault Sport Formula One Team racer ending the afternoon session with the seventh fastest time.
The German had trailed in eighteenth in the opening session on Friday morning but found some more pace in his R.S.18 in the afternoon, with his time of 1:29.354s just over 1.8-seconds off the pace of Sebastian Vettel.
Hülkenberg was amongst those to comment about the temperatures at Silverstone, which are much higher than in recent years, and he feels the combination of the heat as well as the freshly laid surface should make both Qualifying on Saturday and the race on Sunday interesting.
“That was a standard Friday where we started with the car not where we wanted it and refined it through the day,” said Hülkenberg. “We made some positive improvements and I’m reasonably happy with how the car’s working here.
“It’s pretty hot out there and this combined to the new surface should make for an interesting qualifying session tomorrow and race on Sunday.”
Team-mate Carlos Sainz Jr. was happy to complete his programme on Friday despite failing to break into the top ten, with his best time of 1:29.563s only good enough for eleventh place in the afternoon session. The Spaniard says the new track surface has plenty of grip, but there are still plenty of bumps to contend with.
“We managed to complete our programme so I’m pretty happy with how the day went,” said the Spaniard. “There’s certainly some work to do for tomorrow but we gathered important data. The long run was quite busy with the cars in front so I’m confident there is more pace to come.
“The new surface has plenty of grip, even when it was dirty at the start of the first session, but it is quite bumpy too. The DRS in turns 1 and 2 was interesting and it was a superb feeling to be flat out at a very hot and sunny Silverstone.”
