Piquet Confident of Top Three Slot

Piquet Jr, who signed up to compete in the three European races for his home nation, was second fastest in the dry free practice session this morning and was quickest in the wet session this afternoon.

He also reckons that should this afternoon's wet weather conditions repeat themselves in qualifying tomorrow he will be able to secure pole.

"For qualifying we are going to be top three," Piquet Jr told Autosport-Atlas. "And that's if dry. If it's wet we will be first. We have our qualifying strategy but we won't tell anyone until tomorrow."

The former British F3 champion still managed fastest time in the afternoon despite having his session curtailed by marshals who extinguished his car while it was smoking in the pits.

Piquet Jr said: "The marshals saw some smoke and thought it was a fire. Our plan was not to go out any longer anyway and just to look after the rain tyres we have because we only get two sets per weekend. We did not want to be out on the track while it was drying and ruin them."

Only 42 minutes of the scheduled 60 were run in this afternoon's session, because five red flags were flown.

"People have been spinning off not because they aren't familiar with the car but they are not familiar in the rain," Piquet Jr added. "The car isn't stable, it is still dangerous in the wet but I managed to drive on the limit and be quick.

"I'm still losing a lot in the high speed corners but that was because I didn't drive a lot in the dry morning session because I had some problems."