McLaren 'comfortable' with performance

Briton Lewis Hamilton, winner of the season opener in Australia last weekend, posted the quickest time of the day when the stopped the clock at 1:35.055, just edging Ferrari's Felipe Massa in the second practice session.

Hamilton was hindered by a gearshift problem in the morning, but he said it hadn't affected his programme. Teammate Heikki Kovalainen was seventh fastest.

And although Whitmarsh admitted there is still room for improvement, he was happy with the team's showing.

Whitmarsh said: "With these back to back races at the start of the season, it is often difficult to keep up the momentum of our relentless development pace; subsequently both drivers were evaluating several new parts on top of the set up and tyre evaluation work that is customary during the Friday sessions.

"Despite the small gearshift problem on Lewis's car this morning we are pretty comfortable with the performance of the MP4-23 here.

"Obviously there is always room to improve and the engineers will be working hard this evening to find those extra tenths, but overall we are reasonably happy," he added.