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Formula One
F1: Hamilton – ‘It’s A Huge Improvement’
Lewis Hamilton enjoyed his first laps with the MP4-25 Tuesday...
Adam Cooper  | http://www.speedtv.com  |  Posted February 02, 2010   Valencia (ESP)
Lewis Hamilton led the opening free practice session in Malaysia Friday. (Photo: LAT Photographic)
A buoyant Lewis Hamilton says he is happy with the new McLaren MP4-25 after his first day of running at Valencia.
Lewis Hamilton took his first laps of 2010 during Formula One testing at Valencia Tuesday. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

He finished the day third fastest, but as ever it’s difficult to judge what teams were up to in terms of fuel loads. However this time last year the team already knew that it was in for a difficult season.

“It was a night and day different feeling compared to the first lap on the first test day in 2009,” said Hamilton after the session. “A positive feeling. I’ve obviously kept a close eye on the development of this car. The results we got at the end of 2009, seeing the car evolve and having input into it, I was excited to get in the car today to see what parts we improved. Hopefully we’ll have got rid of lots of the bugs that we had in the previous car.

“We got in today, and it felt good. I got out smiling. All the problems I had generally with the last car I don’t have with this one. But there’s still a lot of areas we can improve on.

“It’s gone well. Obviously the Ferrari seems very quick, and so was the Sauber. But we don’t know what fuel loads everyone else was on. We felt quite comfortable in what we were doing, but there is obviously quite a bit of time we need to find.”

Lewis was still wary of predicting how the season might go: “It’s too early days to really say. But I do feel it’s a huge improvement from the beginning of 2009. And therefore we’re not three seconds behind. The progress that we’re going to make from here and to the first race, hopefully we can do it as good as job as we did at the beginning of 2009. We’re not last, which is a nice feeling!”

Interestingly he said the car felt good even when running this year’s extra high fuel loads.

“It doesn’t feel very different to me, to be quite honest. The only reason I say that is just the car feels quite comfortable with that fuel load in the car. I’m looking forward to the next couple of tests we have, just to get some more running, more longer runs, and to see really the behavior with the tires.”


Unofficial Tuesday test times from Valencia:

1. Felipe Massa, Ferrari, 1:11.722, 124 Laps
2. Kamui Kobayashi, BMW Sauber, 1:12.056, 96 Laps
3. Lewis Hamilton, McLaren, 1:12.256, 108 Laps
4. Robert Kubica, Renault, 1:12.426, 119 Laps
5. Nico Rosberg, Mercedes GP, 1:12.899, 119 Laps
6. Rubens Barrichello, Williams, 1:13.377, 102 Laps
7. Sebastien Buemi, Toro Rosso, 1:13.823, 107 Laps

Adam Cooper notched up his 25th season as a racing journalist in 2009. Born in London, England, he saw his first F1 race at age 10 in 1976. He began freelancing for Autosport magazine in 1985 and was on the fulltime staff from 1987-92. He then went freelance again, initially spending two years in Japan before following the 1994 Champcar series from a base in Indianapolis. He has not missed a Grand Prix since Suzuka ‘94, a run that has extended to Abu Dhabi ’09. Adam has written books about Eddie Irvine, Piers Courage and Michael Schumacher and hosts a race preview show on Sirius XM. He has written about F1 for SPEEDtv.com since 2005.

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