Stoffel Vandoorne expressed relief that the feel of his McLaren MCL33 is “back to normal” after he was plagued by a mystery loss of downforce across the previous two events.
Vandoorne remained rooted towards the rear of the field for much of the weekends in Britain and Germany as McLaren strived to understand a lack of grip with his car.
Having changed multiple components, McLaren opted to swap Vandoorne’s chassis with an old version for this weekend’s Hungarian Grand Prix.
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Despite placing down in 19th, eight-tenths of a second behind Fernando Alonso in FP2, Vandoorne conveyed encouragement over his performance.
“The feeling was actually back to normal, that was a positive thing to get into this weekend,” he said.
“We actually had a normal Friday where we could work normally on the car set-up.
“The long run pace was good, back to normal, quite competitive.
“It feels like tomorrow we can finally start putting some pieces back together again and prepare the best we can for qualifying.
“It’s nice just to have a normal weekend I would say, to finally start working again and not completely looking after problems all the time.”
Vandoorne has dropped out of Q1 at the past four events but believes a return to Q3 is within his reach.
“It’s very tight,” he said. “I think the target for us is to be as close as possible to the top 10.
“I don’t know if being in Q3 is a good thing with the tyres, with the Ultrasoft, so being as close as possible would be ideal.”
