Webber says RB4 better than '07 car

With the Milton Keynes-based team's challenger having made clear progress since it was launched last month, Webber is fairly upbeat about the step forward that he has noticed.

However, he still believes there are shortcomings that need to be addressed if the team are to escape from a tightly-packed midfield group.

"The times are quite close between quite a few teams at the moment," Webber told autosport.com. "We still need to work on the problem we have at the moment, which is getting the car balanced for high and medium speed corners.

"The car is not difficult to drive, which is not too bad. It is definitely better than last year's car.

"We were quite happy in Valencia, it went quite well. But Jerez gave us a bit more of a challenge in terms of the speed difference from fast to slow corners, so we are working on getting on top of that.

"Reliability is not bad at all. We've done a lot of laps. Reliability is a lot better; last year we were in a complete mess with the gearbox. This year that it is encouraging for us. It could be a lot worse. We're going okay."

The RB4 featured a radical 'shark fin' engine cover at Jerez last week, which the team hoped would help cure some of the high speed balance issues.

Despite the progress, however, Webber has expressed some irritation that the team are once again going to face a tough battle in the midfield.

"I'm frustrated again how close the group B is," he said about the fight behind Ferrari and McLaren. "You have Williams, Renault, and BMW there with us. It would just be so nice to get in a position like BMW last year - where they were behind McLaren and Ferrari but sitting in a nice gap of their own.

"At the moment we are not in that gap and I think Renault themselves look a little bit stronger. I predict that fight to continue for the next month until we go to Melbourne. We'll see. BMW look like they're already making a little bit of progress."

Webber's feelings about the competitiveness of that midfield battle have been supported by teammate David Coulthard, who remains unsure about the form of the RB4.

"At the moment, we haven't done low fuel runs so it's difficult to have an idea of how fast we are," he said.

"We believe the car has some potential, but it is difficult at the moment to say how much quicker it is than last year's car. You can see that Toro Rosso with last year's cars are going very well, with low fuel for sure, but their long runs were very good as well. It means that the old sort of car is in a good shape and now we need to make this new car go fast.

"I think if we look at the testing so far, Ferrari look to have a small advantage over McLaren, and those two are much quicker than anyone else. And then, BMW seem to an extent to have gone back a little bit, while Renault have gone forward a little bit. Honda seem in the same trouble. We hope we're going forward, but we don't know yet."