OMNISPORT

Lewis Hamilton felt a "positive buzz" from his Mercedes as he set the pace in practice at the Australian Grand Prix on Friday. The five-time Formula One world champion laid down a marker ahead of the first race of the season in Melbourne, topping the timesheets in both sessions.

Hamilton's teammate Valtteri Bottas was second quickest in FP2, 0.048 seconds slower than the Brit.

Sebastian Vettel was 0.873secs back in fifth spot in the second session and Hamilton was encouraged by the performance of the W10 as he eyes a winning start at Albert Park on Sunday.

"I really have a positive buzz from driving the car today and it's not too dissimilar to how it was last year." said the reigning champion. "Driving around here it's such a great track and with these new cars, the flow is just beautiful. It's how Formula One cars are supposed to be when they're wide and they're big. The aerodynamic flow that we have on the car.

"What we've got to do is study - as we always do on a Friday night - analyze everything but the fact is we've got two cars that continue to go around. None of us made mistakes, that counts for a lot - keeping the car in one piece - and we'll just have to make sure we do the same again tomorrow."

There was also a word of caution from Hamilton despite such a positive day.

"If you look today at how close it is, even the mid-pack are really close, so I would say even more than ever before there's even less margin for error," said Hamilton. "That's how it's supposed to be, that's what we get paid the big bucks to do is to pull out those milliseconds to try and make the difference so I'm super stoked and excited for what's to come."