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Vandoorne feeling good about Friday running after chassis change

10:45, 28 Jul 2018

byJake Williams-Smith

Stoffel Vandoorne says he is feeling much more hopeful of a good weekend after Friday's running. The Belgian had a nightmare race weekend in Germany and the team opted to revert to an old chassis after being unable to diagnose an aerodynamic anomaly in his car.

Despite spinning off during his qualifying simulation, Vandoorne said he felt positive with how his weekend was going. The Belgian spoke to media after practice saying that the car felt back to normal and it was business as usual at McLaren.

"The feeling was actually back to normal, so that was a positive thing to get into this weekend – we actually had a normal Friday where we could work normally on the car set-up," he said.

"Unfortunately no lap time on the ultrasofts for me because I spun off the track, but long run pace was good, back to normal, quite competitive.

"A good feeling in the car again and it feels finally like tomorrow we can start putting some pieces together again and prepare the best we can for qualifying."

Despite being back to normal, Vandoorne admitted he was unsure if qualifying in the top 10 would be a positive thing due to the tyre strategy it would limit the team to at a circuit wear is crucial at, but was just happy to be having a clean weekend for the first time in a while.

"It is very tight.

"I think the target for us is to be as close to possible to the top 10. I don't know for us if being in Q3 is a good thing with the tyres, the ultrasofts, so being as close as possible would be ideal.

"It's nice just to have a normal weekend, get into the weekend and finally start working again and not just completely look after problems all the time.

"So, happy how today went and looking forward to progress a bit tomorrow."