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Massa hails 'best day up to now'

Felipe Massa described the penultimate day of pre-season testing as "the best day I had up to now" after finishing with the second fastest time.

The Brazilian driver took over from team-mate Valtteri Bottas for the final two days of testing and proceeded to complete more than 100 laps and go second behind Kimi Raikkonen with a lap on soft tyres. While Massa did run the ultrasofts he was unable to improve, but he was still buoyed by a reliable and competitive day's running.

“It was quite good, I think it was the best day I had up to now," Massa said. "We didn’t have an amazing week last week, I would say, but this week is going very well.

"It was quite good for Valtteri and today was a very good day for me to understand the car. That’s the most important thing, so I managed to understand the car in the best way compared to last week. Changing the set-up, the behaviour of the car, the feeling of the car was positive.

"Also trying the programme we did, on the long runs the car behaved well, but also on the short runs I could have done even a slightly better lap time because I had traffic with my ultrasoft tyres. But I think it was positive, so I am happy with the day and I hope I can be happy tomorrow as well and I hope we can be 100% ready to start the season.”

And Massa says he is unconcerned by problems with graining on the softer compounds during testing conditions.

“Well this is a track where the soft tyres are also quite soft for this track. So it’s a track that maybe in the race you’re going to use more medium and even hard. So yes we have graining on the front, we even have amazing graining with the supersoft and the ultrasoft which is too soft for this track.

"So I don’t think you need to worry about that so much and just understand the car and understand everything you have around you for the start of the season.”

Follow live coverage and timing from pre-season testing here

GALLERY: Pre-season testing

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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.