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Felipe Massa is convinced Ferrari has finally found the direction that will allow the team to unlock all the potential from its 2012 challenger.

The Italian squad has endured a difficult pre-season so far, as it worked on getting to grips with the radical F2012 car with which it hopes to return to winning ways this season.

Massa completed his two days of work at Barcelona today, covering over 100 laps for the first time this year and finishing as fifth quickest.

The Brazilian believes that after a difficult final morning, Ferrari made a breakthrough in the afternoon that will allow the team to finally extract the best from the car.

"I think it's definitely the direction we need to follow for these last days of testing we have, and I think today was a positive day, not so much in the morning but in the afternoon," Massa told reporters.

"I have to say that now we are a little bit more positive because we found the direction to work and I'm sure now, having found the direction, we can see the development coming.

"In the afternoon we were able to do more than eight/nine timed laps consistently. The laps were very consistent and it was very positive. We still need to work a lot but at least we found the direction to get a much better car to drive, not just for laptime for also for consistency."

He added: "In the past we didn't have so many directions to follow. This year we have so many directions, so many possibilities and the most important thing was to find the right one, and I'm sure we found it."

Massa conceded, however, there is still a lot of work left to do before the car is where the team wants it.

"I think more than five," he said when asked how prepared Ferrari is on a scale of one to ten, "but there is still work to be done to be closer to where we want. But at least we made a good step to find the direction."