Triple world champion Lewis Hamilton called his Mercedes team “amazing” after topping both Friday sessions at the Spanish Grand Prix.
The Briton was also to just beat team-mate Valtteri Bottas by less than a tenth of a second in practice, as the two Silver Arrows laid down the marker for Ferrari and the rest to chase.
Revealing how his day went, Hamilton said: “First practice was very, very good but in second practice the track changed and shifted quite a lot, so it was slippery and quite a lot slower for everyone – especially with the gusts of wind. It was massively challenging but still fun nonetheless.
“The team has done an amazing job with the upgrades and the car is working just as we expected. It’s been a much better start to the weekend for me than in Sochi, so I’m very happy.
“We’ve just got to keep our heads down and keep working, we want to be number one,” he proclaimed.
Bottas too was optimistic about the improvements, but did warn that very little could be read into the three-tenths margin to the fastest Ferrari.
“At this time it’s way too early to tell exactly where we are, but everything seems to be working well so far,” the Finn said.
“It’s always nice to start the weekend in a positive way, but the main days are Saturday and Sunday.
“As always we will work hard to find any performance. I really enjoyed it out there today so I hope we can squeeze some more performance out of the package,” he added.