Lewis Hamilton said he is pleased Mercedes have put the problems they experienced in testing behind them after topping the first two practice sessions of 2017.

The Mercedes driver ended Friday running half-a-second quicker than any other driver. His team had been six-tenths of a second slower than Ferrari in testing at the Circuit de Catalunya.

Hamilton said his first day had been “99 per cent perfect”.

“After struggling with some issues in Barcelona, we didn’t know if we’d have the same thing here,” he said. “What’s really encouraging is that we’ve arrived at the track just a week later and the car is exactly where it should be.”

Hamilton said the team had “got every lap done that we wanted to” and shown good form “on both the long and short runs”.

He admitted to having been uncertain about how strong Ferrari would be to begin with.

“Coming into today, we really didn’t know where we’d be,” he said. “We knew from FP1 that the Ferrari’s weren’t at their maximum. Of course, in FP2 all of a sudden they were quick.”

“We’ll see tomorrow how it really stands,” Hamilton added.

Hamilton ended practice over half a second ahead of his new team mate Valtteri Bottas.

“We still have work to do with the car balance but we got all of our running completed without any issues,” said Bottas. “I definitely feel like I can make a step forward tomorrow,”

“It is only practice, so tomorrow we’ll find out exactly where we are,” he added.

2017 F1 season