In the final Friday free practice sessions prior to the 2017 summer break, Scuderia Ferrari driver Sebastian Vettel sat second on the leaderboard after running on the Soft and Supersoft tyre compounds supplied by Pirelli.
His best time of 1'18”638 in FP2 was marginally faster than his first session time of 1'19”563.
Despite a couple of stoppages when the red flags came out in both sessions, the Italian team managed to complete their planned programme, ending the day doing long runs.
Sebastian took stock at the end of the day which saw steady improvement in the performance of his updated SF70H.
“This morning I wasn't that happy,” he said, “but in the afternoon I started getting the rhythm. So, I think we were not that bad, but it's difficult to read the session. Ferrari, Mercedes and Red Bull are very close to each other. It should be good fun tomorrow. We need to find the best settings for tomorrow and work a little bit more on the tires and on the driving. Then it should be better.”
“I had a bit of damage on the car, after running over a kerb, so that we had to go back to the garage, but in the end it was fine. We saw some cars going off track today, especially at the exits to Turns 4 and 11, which are quite tough.”
“I was a bit too aggressive this morning. But everything seems to work, so we should be in a better place tomorrow. Two years ago here the race was not bad – we won – and we had some other good races here. However, you always hope that the best race is yet to come. We have another chance on Sunday and we are looking forward to it”.
