Lewis Hamilton was pleased with the progress McLaren has made after he finished Friday practice for the Australian Grand Prix with the second fastest time.
Hamilton was only bettered by his team-mate Jenson Button as the upgrades that McLaren brought to Australia paid dividends. And the 2008 world champion said that the car had come on a long way since the end of testing in Barcelona.
"The car feels like an improvement over winter testing, but I'm not reading too much into the others' performance," Hamilton said. "We just spent the day focusing on our own programme. The tyres are behaving very well; they don't feel like they're degrading, and they're lasting well, too. Hopefully we can pick up some points this weekend - I feel positive. The grip level today felt like a big step forward. We don't know what fuel loads the others are running, but our car feels like a big improvement from where we were just a few weeks ago."
Having reaffirmed his commitment to McLaren earlier in the day, Hamilton paid tribute to the rest of the team for its role in developing the MP4-26.
"That's simply a result of hard work: all the men and women back at the factory and at the track this weekend have done a fantastic job. It's difficult to gauge how different our car is, but there's more downforce, which is something we're always asking for. This is a major positive. Our initial feeling is that the car is good, but we'll need to see tomorrow - still, I think we're in the hunt for some points."
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