Carlos Sainz says McLaren would make a “big mistake” to sit back despite a “decent” Friday at the Chinese Grand Prix.
The Spaniard claimed sixth fastest in the afternoon session in Shanghai and with teammate Lando Norris also in the top 10, signs are the British team could continue their form from Bahrain.
However, Sainz knows others will keep pushing to improve and admits there is still some room for improvement.
“The field looks as close as it was at the first two races, or even closer, which means you can’t take anything for granted,” he told the McLaren website.
“It would be a huge mistake not to analyse every detail just because we had a decent Friday. I want more from the car and we need to make sure we don’t fall back down the order if anyone improves tomorrow.
“The car’s still not perfect – we still have a few things to improve – but hopefully we can put it together for tomorrow and have another positive Saturday.”
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As for Norris, he is looking to continue his 100% record of making Q3 this season and believes a solid foundation has been built as he gets to grips with China’s sweeping curves.
“It was my first time driving on this circuit and I think I got up to speed reasonably quickly, which was good because that meant we could start focussing on the car and the setup much earlier than we could in Australia,” the 19-year-old revealed.
“We made further progress in FP2 but there’s still a lot of work to do. The car’s not exactly where we want it yet but we made some improvements, so we just need to make sure we keep going in that direction.”
