Nico Hülkenberg is “encouraged” about Renault F1 Team’s performance at the Circuit de Barcelona-Cataluyna.

The German driver completed 51 laps on the final day of the second test to put his tally over 500 laps over the two pre-season tests in Spain.

Hülkenberg has been pleased with the progress made by the team and described the reliability of the new R.S.19 as “decent” despite a few issues.

“I leave Barcelona feeling encouraged after a busy eight days in the car.

“We’ve made good progress as a team from last year in particular on the power unit.

“Our reliability has been decent, we had a few small issues here and there, but the team dealt with anything like that quite well and still managed a high lap count.”

The midfield looks as tight as ever in 2019 but Hülkenberg is focused on Renault themselves and aims to be fully prepared for the Australian Grand Prix in three weeks time.

“We know the competition is extremely tight, but we only want to focus on ourselves.

“We head to Melbourne feeling relatively confident, but in the meantime, we have a lot of analysis to look at to ensure we maximise the potential from the car.”