While Lewis Hamilton is delighted with what he's seen of the new McLaren, he fears that Red Bull remains the benchmark.

"It will be up to us to be able to surpass it," he told Gazzetta dello Sport, having admitted that, on reflection, the 2011 McLaren, which helped him and his teammate deliver six wins; "wasn't that bad after all".

Explaining why the Red Bull has been the car to beat in recent seasons, the 2008 world champion admitted: "Basically Red Bull is an evolution of the aerodynamic concepts introduced in 2009. Midway through 2011 it was phenomenal, it was at the highest level and on top of that it almost never broke down. By contrast, when we had the same reliability, we lacked the same performance."

However, before his, and his team's, fans get too despondent, he was quick to add some good news about the new car - even if it sounded eerily similar to what we've heard for the last couple of years. "From what I've seen, the new McLaren seems a lot better than last year's," he said.

Reflecting on previous years, especially the start of last season, when the MP4-26's radical exhaust system was dropped in an eleventh hour move after the car was found to be almost 2s off the pace of the Red Bull, he said: "During the winter you always dream of arriving at the start of the season with a car that goes quick immediately. "This hasn't happened in the last two seasons. I want it to happen this year. If we start well, we'll stay at the top more easily."

And as for his teammate, Jenson Button, who, contrary to speculation, has fitted into the Woking set-up perfectly and more than risen to the Hamilton challenge, the 2008 champ admitted: "Jenson is very quick and he's gathered a strong team of technicians around him.

""I'd like to be ahead of him all the time, and I'm not happy if the opposite happens," he added. "However, psychologically it's absolutely not a problem. Besides, he's an open and cheerful guy who I get along with. It would be nice to fight for the 2012 championship with him: that's just up to McLaren."