Max Verstappen believes Red Bull still head to Australia in a "promising" position despite losing the final day of testing.
Damage left over from Pierre Gasly's crash on Thursday meant the RB15 was running on old parts which had been hastily sent to Barcelona.
However, after managing just 29 laps in the morning, a gearbox damaged in his teammate's other crash last week also gave up.
“The team worked so very hard to even let me drive today at all,” he told Crash.net. “We just had very few parts. Everything came over from England last night so it’s a miracle we were even able to go out.
“We were a bit short on gearboxes. Two were already broken in two crashes. So that was it."
Despite the problems, Verstappen also managed to set at least a noteworthy lap time of 1m17.7s on the C3 tyre, which would convert to a 1m16.5s based on Pirelli's projections between the different compounds.
“It wasn’t great today but the speed looks alright," the Dutchman noted. “Looking at long runs the top teams are all fairly close. We can be happy with that.”
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Now though the proof will come in the pudding at Albert Park in two weeks time, with the 21-year-old keen to begin the season on a solid note.
“It’s a long season, so much can happen," he said. “Last year the World Championship was out of reach after the summer break.
“In Melbourne, we need to score good points, no matter the positions. We are fairly strong on pace though not sure whether it’s enough because we didn’t really get to do low fuel runs.
“If we look to the longer runs, it looks all pretty promising, so yeah, I’m looking forward to starting racing now.
“I think we have a pretty good package and also the engine seems to work really well. So I’m really happy about that.”
