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Sainz excited by advantage he holds heading into British GP qualifying

Carlos Sainz set the quickest time in the second practice session at the Silverstone Circuit on Friday, but believes his Ferrari still has more potential ahead of what is expected to be a wet qualifying on Saturday.

Ferrari finished day one of the British Grand Prix weekend at the top of the timing sheets when Carlos Sainz set the best overall lap time of the day with a 1:28.942, 0.16 seconds ahead of the next-best time set by the Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton. After sitting out the majority of the first hour due to rain, the Spanish driver ticked off plenty of laps during the second hour as he completed both long and short-run drills However, Sainz was happy to have registered more laps than most in wet conditions with the weather forecast for Saturday predicting yet more British summertime rain. That could prove to be an advantage during qualifying for the British Grand Prix, with Sainz having already built an understanding of how his car performs at a soggy Silverstone. "A busy second session after the lack of running in FP1. We had to put together an intense run plan for FP2 to properly check both the short run and the long-run pace,” Sainz said. "It was quite a challenging session. The wind made it tricky to get the right balance for the high-speed sections and the correct compromise for tyres in the low-speed ones."

Sainz: Let's see what tomorrow brings

Despite setting the quickest time of the day, Sainz believes there is still more to come from the car on qualifying day. "Overall we were quick, but it felt like there is margin to improve," Sainz continued. "Qualifying tomorrow could get interesting due to the weather, so those few laps in wet conditions in FP1 were also useful." He added: "Let’s see what tomorrow brings."

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RESULTS 2024 F1 Chinese Grand Prix - Qualifying