Lewis Hamilton struck a much more upbeat tone hailing a day of strong progress for Mercedes in understanding their W10.
The German manufacturer has struggled to unleash the performance of their new car so far, but a new upgrade introduced this week appears to be bringing the team more in line with their top three rivals.
In fact, the 1m18.0s on the C2 Pirelli tyre, which was Hamilton's fastest time on Thursday, is only a few tenths shy of Ferrari's benchmark was 1m16.2s when tyre-corrected.
“Today has been a good day – lots of mileage, which is great for us,” Hamilton commented, with him and teammate Valtteri Bottas combining for 181 laps.
“It has probably been one of the most positive days for us, we’ve really learned quite a lot.
“We’ve been able to apply our learnings from the morning to the afternoon, so I’m looking forward to seeing how Valtteri felt, but the car looked like it was in a better place.
“Our understanding of the W10 is continuously growing so it was definitely a positive day.”
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Bottas did then back up the world champion's optimism adding: “I did a race simulation which was interrupted by the red flag, but it confirmed the progress we’ve made since last week.”
The highest single-day total for a team this pre-season also saw Mercedes surpass 1,000 laps of testing.
