Stoffel Vandoorne will line up a solid 13th on the grid for Sunday afternoon's Austrian Grand Prix after underlining in qualifying the promising pace he has shown all weekend. In fact, Stoffel's time was a mere 0.191s adrift away from a place in the top ten.
Nevertheless, starting on the fringes of the top 10 gives the Belgian driver an opportunity to move forwards during the race and hopefully make it into the points by the time the checkered flag is waved.
It would be fantastic for the team to come away from this weekend with some points – that's certainly their ambition – and it looks like they may have a realistic chance of achieving that if they can maintain this positive direction.
“I think it's been a pretty good weekend for us so far,” Stoffel said. “The practice sessions have gone well and qualifying was more or less what we expected. This afternoon's times were extremely close: it all came down to a couple of small details – with another couple of tenths, we'd have been into Q3.”
“So today really shows that every improvement we bring to the car is very valuable – it all helps. We're definitely headed in the right direction - every new piece of performance we bring is welcome, but we need to keep pushing.”
