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Red Bull progressing - Webber

Mark Webber spent a lot of time in his RB8 on Thursday, completing 102 laps © Getty Images

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Mark Webber says that Red Bull is making progress with the new RB8 after an encouraging first day of the final test in Barcelona.

Webber completed over 100 laps on his way to the fourth quickest time of the day, less than 0.6s slower than Romain Grosjean's pace-setting time. After calling for Red Bull to make progress during the second test in Barcelona, Webber said that the team was definitely moving forward and that it was a case of using Red Bull's experience to pick the areas to focus its efforts.

"We are making progress, there's so many things to obviously consider," Webber said. "When we have a pretty condensed winter programme like all the teams have you need to get your priorities right and work on those as best you can. That's when experience comes in with the team like we have here, so it's going well in terms of what we want to test, but there's not enough hours of the day at the moment and I'm sure we're not the only team feeling that."

With 2.3s covering all of the teams on Thursday, Webber admitted that he thought the season would be very close, and said the key to a title challenge would be to pick up consistent points in the opening races.

"I think it's going to be really tight. The racing will be between several teams for sure. It's difficult to understand who is doing what at the moment because we have such a big variation in fuel and tyre conditions and all sorts of stuff, so you can analyse it until you're blue in the face but ultimately - even until I've done the race in Melbourne we need to then go to Sepang and we need to get a picture on how the championship is unfolding.

"It's not just going to be one event, one ninety minute race in Albert Park won't be deciding the championship it's going to be whoever can pull things together for the first part of the championship, come back with some decent points and then go from there."

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.