Hamilton pleased with new McLaren

Lewis Hamilton was pleased with the work his McLaren team have completed over the past two days as he hands the car over to team-mate Jenson Button.

Hamilton will not test again in Barcelona until the next session during the first week of March, with Jenson Button completing the next two days of testing for the team.

The McLaren may well have only been sixth quickest on the day, but testing days are not just about setting the fastest lap of the day, in fact its almost irrelevant as teams continue to work on set-ups, settings, data analysis and basically just learning about their new car and how it performs.

'The car behaves well in the high-speed corners, The baseline of our car is higher than last year, and it's better overall at high speed.' a pleased Hamilton told the BBC.

Hamilton completed 120 laps around Barcelona's Circuit de Catalunya on Wednesday and the 2008 Formula One World Champion added: 'To have completed more than 1,000 kilometres in the past two days is incredibly encouraging. The whole team should feel proud.

'It's been an extremely productive few days, and I think Jenson will continue to improve the car tomorrow.'

When you compare the amount of miles the McLaren team have completed during the winter of 2012 to last year, it is like comparing night and day.

Last season McLaren missed the first test of the season and then had reliability issues in particular with their exhaust, which limited them to around 30 laps of testing at this stage last year.

The team were just playing catch-up throughout pre-season and this year things appear much more settled, which can only be a positive for the team.