Spyker target 12th place in qualifying

The Silverstone-based squad showed significant progress in the previous race in Spa, where Adrian Sutil fought in the midfield with the updated B-spec car introduced in the Monza race.

The German driver again shone in today's practice sessions, finishing ninth quickest in the morning and 16th in the afternoon.

Technical chief Mike Gascoyne is adamant there is more to come from Spyker, as the Briton believes the team have taken another stop forward since the last race.

"At the end actually Adrian made quite a big mistake on his new tyre run and I think we are over one lap quicker than we showed, and long run pace looked very competitive," said Gascoyne.

"I think we have taken another step forward. The bits we brought here seemed to be working well and it looks very good.

"I think it should be higher than that to be honest," he said when asked if the team were aiming to qualify as high as 16th.

"We don't know what other people have done with fuel levels, but if you look at the long run pace with the first two runs this afternoon, it was very, very competitive.

"Traditionally we have struggled to get the one lap out of it so hopefully we can do that tomorrow. But we seem to have definitely taken a step forward.

"I think we would be very disappointed if we didn't make (Q2) that. We seem to be definitely ahead of Super Aguri and matching Honda.

"He (Sutil) did a 20.5 this morning with a couple of mistakes so he should have done a 20.3, which would have been 12th or 13th, so that is where we are aiming."