Sebastian Vettel was pleased with his first day behind the wheel of the new Ferrari SF71H after topping both the lap time and lap count standings in Barcelona on Tuesday.

The German four-time world champion completed 98 laps with a 'best of the test' so far of 1:19.673s which just put him ahead of the Mercedes of Valtteri Bottas.

However, understanding that the lap times are not particularly important at this stage, it was the distance covered which gave Vettel the most optimism.

"We managed to cover almost a hundred laps without encountering any reliability problems," he proclaimed. "That’s what we are concentrating on at the moment, with the search for performance coming later."

It was testing last year which offered the first indication that the Scuderia had closed the gap to Mercedes so, as a result, many wondered how the 30-year-old's impression of his new car compared to his last.

"The fact it’s been much colder than last year and also that the track has been completely resurfaced means it’s impossible to make any comparisons," Vettel responded disappointingly.

"For now, we are concentrating on ourselves, without looking at what the others are doing."