Stoffel Vandoorne is staying firmly grounded despite McLaren's performance on Friday during practice. Vandoorne finished inside the top ten in free practice two but isn't allowing the result to raise expectations greatly going into Saturday.
The Belgian finished comfortably ahead of teammate Fernando Alonso after the Spaniard ran off the road and damaged his floor, requiring it to be replaced. Vandoorne however had a much smoother practice.
“It was a pretty busy day today,” he said.
“The morning was spent evaluating a number of new parts and ideas, which meant that the real focus was on getting some consistent laps and some good, clean data.
“In the afternoon, I was able to get into more of a rhythm with the car, and, while we didn’t really manage to get the balance right, the times weren’t too bad.”
The Belgian admitted however despite a positive start to the weekend, maintaining that level of performance on Saturday would be difficult for the team and that he wasn't setting expectations too high just yet.
“We still need to work hard, as we’ve seen before that we can look reasonably competitive on a Friday only to drop down the order on Saturdays.
“The most important thing is that we got some good learning done during the sessions, but it’s still too early to say where we are in the competitive order.”
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