Daniel Ricciardo believes P3 isn't a shock result in practice after a productive Friday ahead of the 70th Anniversary Grand Prix.
The Australian benefitted from being one of the last drivers to switch onto the soft tyre for a low fuel run as he pipped former teammate Max Verstappen to sit behind the two Mercedes' at Silverstone.
But after finishing fourth last Sunday, within sight of the podium, the Renault driver believes a repeat is more than attainable for the French manufacturer.
"I think that was genuine, at least for the track conditions," Ricciardo said of the result.
"We did a few changes through the session and I really felt a big step, you know, with one of the changes we made.
"I was like: 'alright, this is a pretty good race car right now', so yeah, I think we can hang in there. We'll see.
"I mean, if we are here in quali I think that would still exceed what probably our expectation is now, but I think we can still do a very good job."
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Though the weather is expected to be pretty stable across the three days, with hot sunshine in the forecast, one expected change is worrying Ricciardo a little.
"The big thing is tomorrow, the wind is changing 180 degrees by the looks of it, and it's going to pick up," he explained.
"People at home will go, 'so what?' But that is going to change the balance and the cars a lot.
"So I think tomorrow there might be a different story and there'll be a few other things going on, but we certainly put ourselves in a good place today."
The other big difference teams are having to deal with is Pirelli swapping to C1 tyre for the much softer C4 for this weekend, with all of the running in the morning done on the compound.
"Yeah, the soft is...it's an interesting tyre - that's probably the best way to put it," Danny Ric said, perhaps putting it kindly.
"I was surprised that it held on for most of the lap but I don't think many people are going to want to do much with that tyre for the rest of the weekend, or at least when it counts.
"I think even Lewis [Hamilton] and Valtteri [Bottas] did a bit of a compare and Lewis had had a bit more time on the medium than the soft.
"So I think that's probably where that's gonna go, but that's cool you know: throw another spanner in the works."
Teammate Esteban Ocon was 10th fastest in the second Renault.
