Hamilton: 2018 car is much faster than 2017

Lewis Hamilton has expressed his delight at the pace of his mew Mercedes W09 car after completing 97 laps on the final day of testing.

Hamilton did not trouble the top of the timing sheets on Friday, with Mercedes instead focussing on long-run race simulations.

However, the lap times the reigning champion was setting were comparable to his pole time at the Circuit de Catalunya in 2017.

Hamilton tolf the media: "It's been a really positive test. We got through everything, reliability has been great.

"Everyone has been working their backsides off and doing a tremendous job, I'm really proud of the team.

"We're happy with the information that we've got.

"Both the car and the track are a lot faster compared to last year's race here. In my long run i was doing 1:19s - that's my qualifying time from 2017 every lap."

Hamilton knows that he is going to have to fight to become only the third driver to win five world titles, with Red Bull and Ferrari both looking to end Mercedes' four-year dominance in Fourmula 1.

Hamilton acknowledged their threat, saying: "It's still difficult to know exactly where we are in comparison to Red Bull and Ferrari and we won't fully know that until the first race.

"But I feel like we've got as much information as we could in order to equip us with the best data to go to the season opener. The preparation has been really good in the time that we had."