Red Bull driver Mark Webber backed up his impressively strong pace in testing on Thursday by saying that there is even more speed to come from the team's new car before the start of the season at the Bahrain Grand Prix.
Webber finished top of the standings at the end of the first day of the final pre-season test in Barcelona on Thursday, underlining the pace of the Red Bull RB6 car by finishing nearly a second clear of his rivals.
And although the Australian driver admitted that his best lap was set while the car was relatively light on fuel, he insisted that new performance parts on the car were working well, and that there was more speed to come from the package.
"Obviously we put some new parts on the car which helped a lot - and of course the car wasn't in its heaviest form in terms of fuel," Webber explained at the end of the day.
"Ok, we used a lot of performance today to get the lap time, but we're still looking to improve before Bahrain. We still have problems, so we are not going on holiday tonight. We have more work to do, and we're still improving this car."
He didn't have a completely trouble-free day, with a gearbox problem on his car causing him to stop out on track during the morning running, but despite the latest glitch, Webber insisted that the car was not going to be hindered by the reliability issues that have plagued the team in the past.
"We had one problem today, but apart from that we were faultless," Webber dubiously insisted.
"We were very close to pulling off a beautiful smooth day. Also, to learn about the car sometimes you run parts close to the limit on mileage, which wouldn't be the case on race weekends.
"We had a good year last year with podiums and some wins, but this year we need to raise the bar even higher. We need to achieve more."
He concluded that: "We have to finish as many races as we can, because we're not in a situation where we can get away with DNFs. But we're going to do our best to make the car bombproof, and last year we had the same guys, so I'm very confident that we can get on top of any issues we've had in the last few weeks."
Webber will hand the car over to his team mate Sebastian Vettel for Friday and Saturday, before getting one final day in the car on the last day of testing in Barcelona on Sunday.
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