Hamilton feeling more positive after second week of testing

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Lewis Hamilton was looking and sounding a lot more upbeat on Friday at the end of the second week of pre-season testing at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.

Mercedes had struggled through a subdued first spell in Spain and seemed to be struggling for pace in the opening four days. But the world champions soon looked to be rediscovering their mojo when testing reconvened on Tuesday.

Hamilton went on to put in more miles than any other driver over the course of the test, and finished just 0.003s off Sebastian Vettel's best lap of the entire fortnight with his late Friday afternoon flier.

Hamilton fears Ferrari has a big lead heading to Melbourne

The driver said he was happy to be heading home buoyed up with some good results from all the hard work he and the team had been putting in.

"The last couple of days have been very positive," Hamilton concurred. "It felt like the changes we were making helped us progress and gave us clear feedback of when we were moving in the right or the wrong direction.

"It was nice to feel the car on lighter fuel [on Friday] and to discover it a little better," he added. "I really enjoyed the day and got a good feel for the tyres as well.

"I'm not the biggest fan of testing, as everybody knows, but it has been a positive week overall.

"Even so, there is still a lot to do and we are not there yet; there are lots of areas that we are working on and we are heading in the right direction."

His team mate Valtteri Bottas also finished the test strongly, setting the fourth fastest time of the test just behind Vettel's Ferrari team mate Charles Leclerc.

"That's the final day of testing done - next time we'll drive the W10 it will be in Melbourne!" the Finn commented.

"We've used our time on track here in Barcelona efficiently, learning a lot and improving our performance over the past two weeks. We've also learned that the competition is going to be very, very tough this year.

"We're looking forward to the challenge. We need to keep pushing and find more performance if we want to be competitive in Melbourne, but we have a strong team and have made good progress in the last days.

"We have a few days left to work on the car, so we will give it everything. I'm looking forward to Melbourne!"

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.