Lewis Hamilton says he is pleased with the race pace of his McLaren following Friday's practice sessions for the Turkish Grand Prix.
Hamilton set the third fastest time in the dry afternoon session, and managed to clock up a total of 31 laps. Having done a short burst of flying laps on the soft compound he finished the session with a heavily fuelled long run, and said the durability of the tyres had given him reason for encouragement.
"[I'm] quite surprised that they felt very similar to the last race," Hamilton said. "I thought they'd be a lot worse here, but the long run was probably one of the best practice long runs I've ever had, so it was really good. I expect something similar to Shanghai, definitely. Two or three stops, no more than that."
Hamilton also said he was happy with the amount of running the team managed to do during the afternoon after the morning was heavily affected by the wet weather.
"We saved tyres during this morning's session. In the afternoon, despite the limited running in P1, we got quite a lot of our run-plan completed, which was very satisfying. I initially struggled a little bit with set-up, which we can look at and fix overnight, but I was really pleased with my long-run pace."
With championship leader Sebastian Vettel unable to set a representative lap time during the second session following a crash in the morning, Hamilton said that his target was to finish the race in the top three.
"Generally, our car has a pretty good baseline. We're still in the fight: the most important factor this weekend is to continue with our consistency - getting on the podium is my target, and if we can win that'll be even better!"
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