McLaren Honda driver Stoffel Vandoorne enjoyed one of his best Friday showings of the season at the Red Bull Ring in Austria, ending FP2 just 0.127s behind his teammate, Fernando Alonso, who recorded the 8th best time.
Given the short length of the track, lap-times look set to be very close this weekend – in FP2 on Friday afternoon, positions seven to 17 were covered by less than one second, so Stoffel is expecting a hard fight in qualifying on Saturday afternoon.
“I think it's been a reasonably good Friday for us as a team. We're competing in a very, very close midfield – I think one second covered around 10 cars in FP2 this afternoon – so it will all come down to details tomorrow if we're to have a good result in qualifying,” he said.
“It's such a short lap that a couple of hundredths' difference can make a big difference in terms of grid position. We'll focus on putting everything together and fine-tune the set-up so we can hopefully carry every ounce of performance through to tomorrow.”
