Former World Champs: Bring on Bahrain

Lewis Hamilton may have finished well down the timesheets on Friday but the former Champion is convinced the new MP4-25 car is ready to compete this season.

Hamilton was never truly in contention to defend his World Championship crown in 2009 as he began the season in an uncompetitive McLaren and could not catch up.

But the 25-year-old does not expect a repeat this year after being impressed by the new car in pre-season testing.

"We're in a much stronger position than we were last year," he said. "It feels all new.

"After driving last year's car here this feels light years ahead. When we came here last year we were way off the pace and the car didn't feel too good. We're definitely in a much stronger position, but we've got a lot of work to do."

Hamilton could only manage eighth place on the board on Friday with a time of 1:22.152, while team-mate and defending World Champion Jenson Button was fifth on Thursday with a slower time of 1:23.452.

But Hamilton is not putting too much stock in the placings right now as teams are carrying out so many experiments.

"We don't really know what everyone is doing, but there are quite a few cars looking very fast," he said. "It seems like the Red Bull is pretty quick, the Sauber is very quick, the Mercedes kind of looks quick, the Toro Rosso looks quick.

"Clearly there are some teams that are extremely fast. We're just focusing on our programme. We feel we're doing a good job, but we've got work to do - we don't feel like we're the quickest and we're not comfortable. We're just trying to maximise the days."

Williams clocked the fastest time on Friday with Nico Hulkenberg going round in a time of 1:20.614, ahead of Ferrari's Fernando Alonso's best effort of 1:20.637 and Sauber's Pedro De la Rosa, who had a time of 1:20.973.

Ferrari's performance has left Alonso in bullish mood as the first race in Bahrain approaches in a little over two weeks' time.

"What's clear is that we have done a great job," he told Spanish reporters.

"The car has worked well during all the pre-season, and I was lucky with my days because I had a lot of dry days.

"We made a list of things before we began testing and today we checked the final item, so I think we arrive in Bahrain having done all we could have done, with the homework done. We'll see what happens.

"We don't know how fast we are compared to our rivals, but I think we will extract 100% of our potential."

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