Albers optimistic of strong qualifying

The team's third driver Adrian Sutil showed promising pace by the Silverstone-based squad by posting the seventh quickest time of the day. Albers was 16th fastest.

The Dutchman, who along with teammate Tiago Monteiro made it to the second part of qualifying for the first time this season at Indianapolis, believes the team can do even better tomorrow.

"It was a reasonable day's work, with no real problems to speak of," said Albers. "But if we look at the performance potential of the car, I think we can be even quicker tomorrow.

"I expect us to find a lot more time between now and tomorrow's qualifying session, and I'm optimistic that we should be able to qualify as well as we did in Indianapolis - maybe even better."

Monteiro did not enjoy such a strong session, finishing down in 21st.

"It was a very hot day, which made it very tough on the tyres," he said. "We had two very different compounds and we really needed to give them a thorough evaluation, plus we have a new front suspension geometry that we needed to balance, so it was a much more technical day than usual.

"We were focused on running through a fixed programme, so unfortunately, I couldn't put in a proper lap time.

"The important thing, though, is that we were able to do a solid day's work and now have a good idea of which way to go with the tyres and the set up. I'm pretty sure the speed will sort itself out by tomorrow."