Charles Leclerc is not counting his chickens despite a dominant performance across the board at Imola on Friday.
He was quickest in the first practice session of the day and repeated the trick later in the afternoon. In comparison, championship leaders Red Bull struggled and Max Verstappen was left a frustrated man by the end of the day's running.
Leclerc was pleased with how the day went but warned that the wind was forecasted to switch around for Saturday's running. It was blowing in a southernly direction on Friday and, sure enough, the following day the gusts were blowing north.
The Monegasque remains cautious about his chances for the rest of the weekend until he knows how his Ferrari performs in the new conditions. He said: "For now, everything went quite smoothly.
"The feeling with the car is good, the upgrades on the car are working as expected, which also is a good step, and it's been a very smooth day. It's great being at home, it's always a special feeling for Ferrari being here and having so much support all around the track.
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"It means a lot to all of us, so it would be great if the weekend continues in that direction. However, tomorrow, the conditions will change massively. The wind will completely turn around, which will have a big effect on all the cars and there, we have to be the best at anticipating those changes.
"We need to keep our feet on the ground because tomorrow is going to be big changes with the track conditions, and the track position here is absolutely everything. So qualifying will be super important and it will be important for us to do the job in qualifying, so there's still a lot of work to do and we'll give it all in order to have a great qualifying tomorrow."
Verstappen will hope the new conditions lead to better fortunes for him after struggling to tame his Red Bull on Friday. He went off track no fewer than four times over the two one-hour sessions and, after one of those trips onto the gravel, slammed his steering wheel in frustration.
And he was still seething as he spoke to the media after FP2. The Red Bull driver said: "I'm just not really feeling comfortable in the car. It's moving around a lot and it's very easy to lose the car. So there are a few things that we have to look at, because today... it's just bad, it's uncomfortable and the long run was really bad.
"There are definitely a few things we have to improve if we want to be competitive tomorrow. I guess it can't be worse than today, right? We'll look at a few things that we can do better for tomorrow, but it looks like the others took a bit of a step forward. From our side, just a bad day."
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