Hamilton loving driving 2010 McLaren

After a torrid start to the 2009 season, McLaren has delivered a much more competitive single seater, which has already won a race thanks to Jenson Button in Australia.

Although Hamilton is yet to win a race this year, the Briton says he has been very happy with his start to the season, and admits he is loving driving the MP4-25.

"I'm very pleased," Hamilton said on his website after the start of the season.

"I think I'm driving as well as I ever have - I love driving this year's car: I said to my engineers in Malaysia that I'd never had a car that felt as solid and as planted as the MP4-25, it feels like a car that you can not only find a perfect balance with, but you can also really push it, and it reacts well to the changes on full-tanks or when it's empty.

"And that's meant I've really been able to push to the limit, which is how I love to drive.

"I don't think I've ever enjoyed driving a Formula 1 car more than I have with this year's car. Of course, it hasn't been perfect - but then nothing is - but I feel extremely confident for the races ahead."

The McLaren driver insisted it is qualifying where his team should be focusing on, as he reckons his car is very strong in race trim.

"We saw in Sepang that the car was extremely quick, even if we couldn't do enough in qualifying to get ourselves up the front," he said. "In fact, I think our car's always been quick this season, we just didn't get the job done properly in qualifying in Bahrain, but we've actually been quick in all the races.

"But yeah, we made a step forward in Malaysia - we actually brought forward the new parts we'd planned for China. We've got a few more new parts for China, nothing major, but it should hopefully help us close the gap."