Jenson Button has praised McLaren's new MP4-27 car, claiming 'it feels right', although he admitted there is room for improvements.
The 2009 world champion was pleased with his first real session in the car at the Circuito de Jerez in southern Spain as testing is well underway for the new Formula One campaign which starts in Australia on March 18.
And, Button claims it is a world away from 12 months ago when he had his first experience in the 2011 car which had them battling to stay in contention after a disappointing start to the season due to an exhaust design problem.
Following 60 laps on Tuesday, in which the returning Kimi Raikkonen stole the show with the fastest time in his Lotus, Button said: "There are no niggly areas with the car, which is nice. It's quite different to last year.
"There's obviously work we need to do to improve it, but it feels right, which is good.
"You're never going to start off with a perfect car, but I feel it is more together, and it feels a very good base for the coming days.
"Last year we had reliability issues with the exhaust," he added. "For one lap it felt like you could get something out of the car, but then the degradation (of the tyres) was massive. We knew that from the word go.
"So yes, it does feel very different to testing last year, which is a good thing really because it's not like we can stick on an exhaust that will give us two seconds at the first race.
"The regulations are very different now, so I think you are going to see the cars a lot more bunched up this season - especially at the start of the year when racing gets under way.
"As we improve throughout the season the field will split a little more, but at the start you are going to have a lot of cars within a few tenths (of a second).
"That's great for the sport. It just makes it a little more complicated and difficult for us."