Hillspeed’s Dante Vinci is hopeful for a strong qualifying performance after ending both days of testing with a lap time inside the top five.
The Australian was fourth-quickest on Friday, just 0.381s off the time of pacesetter and championship leader Nikita Bedrin.
It is not the first time that Vinci has impressed in testing, and the 17-year-old is aiming to better his season’s best qualifying of eighth at Spa-Francorchamps.
“It’s happened a few times where we are really quick in testing and we haven’t been able to maintain it,” he admitted. “But, this weekend, it has actually been a lot stronger.
“We’ve been able to maintain it, we’ve tested a lot of things with the car, we’ve found the right setup for quali and I’m going into it confident with the package we have.”
The Sydney-native ended the final session of Friday testing with the third-quickest time and is hopeful to improve on that position even further.
“I’m still going to look at what I can fix, because I don’t want to be in P3, I want to be on the top step,” he said. “I’m going to do what I can, but it has been consistently good and that is a very good sign going into quali.”
Vinci believes he is “naturally a little bit stronger” around the Red Bull Ring circuit, which has been demonstrated by his consistency in practice.
“With other tracks, there has been a slight decrease in performance over the testing but now we have been able to maintain it,” he said. “Following that trend, [qualifying] should just be ‘do the job and see where it takes us’.”
Qualifying starts at 10.20 local time (CEST) this morning (Saturday), with the first race scheduled for 14.25.