De la Rosa: McLaren ready to win

Ferrari have looked like the team to beat in winter testing, with world champion Fernando Alonso saying the Italian squad are a step ahead of McLaren with just two weeks to go before the start of the season in Australia.

But test driver de la Rosa is bullish about his team's chances for the Melbourne race after a strong pre-season with the Mercedes-powered MP4-22.

"I'm sure that our cars will be fighting for victory. I think we can beat anyone," the Spaniard told his country's EFE news agency.

"I've worked very well with Fernando and Lewis (Hamilton). It seemed as if we had been working together for a long time."

De la Rosa admits the lack of serious reliability problems has been a huge help to the team, as they worked on improving the performance of the new car.

"Reliability has been good all winter," he added. "This allowed us to carry out the planned work smoothly, and all the improvements that came from the factory have meant a constant improvement.

"The problems that we had were always related to using components that were close to the end of their useful life and that's normal because we have to use them until they break in order to know their actual endurance."