Sebastian Vettel topped the times in FP2 in Valencia on Friday, but the German played down the significance on a day when many of the usual front runners were well down the order.
Always fast at the Spanish street track, Vettel has won the last two races here from pole position.
“We have some new bits but I think lap times are not allowing us to have a fair conclusion yet,” said the RBR driver. “For us it was important to have a clean practice, a clean day today with no troubles or problems. I’m quite happy with what we did. I think conditions might change quite a bit until Sunday again. It was surprisingly cool today.
“It’s still warm but I think Sunday could be quite a bit hotter, so it could make a difference. But for now I think we’ve collected some quiet good data, we’ll see now whether we made a step or not.”
Asked whether qualifying or race preparation was more important, he said: “I think on Saturday everyone is targeting to put the car as high up as possible and ideally put it on pole. And on Sunday obviously you want to win the race.
“So it’s pretty straightforward. It’s very close these days, as we’ve seen a lot of things can happen, with different strategies etc. I think it’s not entirely clear yet what is the ideal strategy for Sunday. We’ll hopefully make another step tomorrow and see where we are in terms of pace and how competitive we are.
“The most important thing on Friday is to get a straight day, a good day of testing. It’s pretty tricky here. The track gets used once a year, and this morning it was very dusty and very slippery, a lot of wind, this afternoon it was a lot more consistent. I don’t know what other people did, but for us it was important to stick to the programme, which we succeeded at.”
Adam Cooper F1 