McLaren thinks Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button have the car they need after two days of testing

With the outfit having openly declared that it was vital to avoid a repeat of the testing troubles that blighted the build-up to its 2011 campaign, McLaren is quietly upbeat about the platform it has given itself.

In an exclusive interview with AUTOSPORT, McLaren technical director Paddy Lowe said that the fact that Button has already been so positive about the car is a good indication that there will be no repeat of the testing nightmares of last year.

"I think Jenson is pretty happy so, so far so good," said Lowe. "I think the way he put it best was, 'this is a car that I can work with'. And that is what you need for a championship, so you cannot say better than that really."

Lowe believes that the situation McLaren finds itself in at this early stage of testing is already much better than it was after the conclusion of pre-season running last year - during which McLaren suffered reliability troubles with what it has now revealed to be a 'Fan tail' exhaust.

"We never, throughout the three track tests we had - which was 12 days - reached the point that we have reached here of feeling we had a platform we can work with, because we were fighting the exhaust reliability all the way through," he said. "Not even until the very last day. It was only when we went to Australia, did we suddenly find in P1 and P2 that we had a car that could go around."

He added: "The trouble last year was that we had not got through the very process that I have just described. We didn't actually have a platform that we could work with, because the car was inherently unreliable in terms of exhausts."

*Read the full interview with Paddy Lowe, where he talks about the nose rules, exhaust regulations, McLaren's current testing progress and reveals the truth about last year's testing troubles.