Hamilton: Mercedes gains since testing "like night and day"

Hamilton was more than half a second clear of his nearest rival in both Friday sessions in Melbourne, after Mercedes spent most of testing slower than Ferrari.

After the two weeks at Barcelona, Hamilton claimed he had not got his car into a good window, while teammate Valtteri Bottas admitted the team had hard work to do to unlock the W08’s potential.

Hamilton, who led Bottas in FP1 and Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel in FP2, said those issues meant the performance on Friday in Australia was “kind of a relief for all of us”.

“Coming into today we had no idea where we would stand,” he said. “It was kind of a night and day difference to how the car felt on the last day of testing.

“The car's feeling good so I got through all my running and I got a good understanding of the tyres on low and high fuel which puts us in good stead for tomorrow.

“There's things we struggled in in the test and things weren't quite perfect in the car so. [Here] everything's performing at its optimum, which is great.

“It feels amazing and that's, to be honest, surprising.”

Despite his encouraging start, Hamilton said it would be foolish to rule out Ferrari, although he admitted it looked as though Mercedes was clear of Red Bull.

“I think the Ferraris are obviously still very, very fast and strong, much stronger than they've ever been, so we have to keep a close eye on them,” said Hamilton.

“They might not have the power turned up or whatever it may be, so we'll see tomorrow.

“Red Bull have take a great step into this weekend, but it seems that we're currently as strong or a little bit stronger than them.”