Carlos Sainz has said that the first day of the Chinese Grand Prix was a “good day for the team” and he thinks that McLaren will be able to push some of the top midfield teams for the position of ‘best of the rest.’

Sainz quotes for his team:
“We had an encouraging FP2 after facing some issues in FP1. I think we reacted well as a team and put together a better baseline in the afternoon. 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. 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.”

Norris quotes for his team:
“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 set-up much earlier than we could in Australia. That’s a very positive thing for our whole weekend.

“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. Overall, not a bad first day.”