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Hamilton claims to be quicker than ever

Lewis Hamilton: "I love driving this year's car" © Getty Images

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Lewis Hamilton believes he is driving as well as at any point in his career and is confident that he has the best car he has ever driven in the McLaren MP4-25.

Hamilton finished on the podium in Bahrain and then stormed through the field in Australia and Malaysia after mistakes in qualifying. He said this year's McLaren is one of the best all-round cars he has driven and that its performance had been masked by poor grid positions in the last two races.

"I think I'm driving as well as I ever have - I love driving this year's car," he told his official website. "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 One 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 team was reported to have shaved 0.3 seconds off its lap time in Malaysia, a performance gain that Hamilton attributes to McLaren bringing forward its development programme.

"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.

"This is something that Vodafone McLaren Mercedes is fantastic at doing. Last year, we did an absolutely incredible job to claw back three seconds to the frontrunners, and turn a car that was at the back of the grid at the start of the season into a race-winning car by the middle of the year. I honestly don't think there's a better team for developing a car during the season."

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