Lewis Hamilton believes McLaren continued to make step forwards with its troublesome MP4-24 on the opening day of the new season in Melbourne – despite the defending champion finishing a lowly 18th on the times.

The Woking squad admitted it wouldn’t be in a position to fight at the front of the field at the first race following the final pre-season group test at Barcelona earlier this month, with its car suffering from a lack of downforce.

And while the team appeared to make progress during its final outing of the winter at Jerez last week, it conceded it was still anticipating a difficult start to 2009.

Those expectations were realised on Friday at Albert Park as Hamilton in particular struggled throughout the day, ending the first session 16th before slipping a further two spots in the later session.

Speaking in the FIA press conference on Friday evening, the British ace said the downforce deficit meant the car was severely lacking grip and meant he was unable to attack the track as normal.

"In general it’s a good car, but we have a lack of grip everywhere,” he said.

“It's not one particular area, it's just everywhere.

“We cannot carry the speed through the corners as we would like.”

Although he finished the second session 1.8s adrift of surprise pacesetter Nico Rosberg in the Williams, McLaren was within a second perennial rival Ferrari and Hamilton insists this can be seen as progress.

However, he concedes it is still a long way short of where it needs to be.

“It's [the car’s problems] predominantly aero related, we have made some steps forward and for sure the gap to the others is not as big as it was in Barcelona [test] but we have a long way to go," he said.

The world champion endured an untidy opening session to his title defence and then in the later practice complained over the radio that his MP4-24 was bottoming out.

Nevertheless he says mid-afternoon set-up changes improved the car’s performance and gave him more confidence.

“The first session didn’t prove too productive for us,” he said.

“We worked hard to get the prime tyres to operate effectively, but the track conditions and our set-up made it difficult to get them to work, and it didn’t give me the confidence to push hard.

“The changes we made after P1 made the car feel much better,”

“We’re still working to refine the balance – and we have a number of issues still to address – but we are heading in the right direction.”

While Hamilton struggled in the first Friday session, team-mate Heikki Kovalainen got McLaren’s weekend off to a more promising start by finishing an encouraging fifth.

However he later joined Hamilton towards the foot of the times as the grid's pace increased later in the afternoon.

“A reasonable first day – even if the times don’t properly reflect that,” he said after finishing second practice in 17th.

“Although the track was very green and slippery, the car felt good from the start of the session,” said Heikki.

“Our balance was good, particularly in the high-speed corners, and KERS deployed well, working smoothly throughout both sessions.”

New team boss Martin Whitmarsh said the team hadn’t tried to mask its ongoing troubles by abandoning a more disciplined Friday programme, concentrating on longer runs in the afternoon.

He echoed Hamilton’s view that progress was being made, but that the problems wouldn't be solved overnight.

“We arrived in Australia fully aware that we’d be facing a tough start to the season,” he said.

“But we adhered to a disciplined programme today, focusing on tyre durability work, and weren’t swayed by a desire to post flattering times.

“Equally, we’re now focusing on implementing the performance steps we’ve planned for the next few races.

“Overall, then, we’ve made good progress recently but are well aware that we’ve still got a lot of work to do.”

Source: itv-f1