Daniel Ricciardo thinks Red Bull is already in a stronger position than it was this time last winter after an encouraging opening day with the RB12 in Barcelona.
Ricciardo completed 87 laps, the third highest of any driver, on the opening day of winter testing at the Circuit de Catalunya and finished third. It was Red Bull's first chance to sample its TAG Heuer-branded Renault power unit on track after struggling with the French manufacturer's previous two V6 engines.
"Not bad," Ricciardo said when asked how the day went. "We had a few little bits and pieces but we still managed nearly 90 laps today so generally it was a good first day.
"With the few little issues we had we still managed some good long runs. I think that was important today, to get some good 15-lap runs to make sure the car's not overheating or doing anything silly. We can then find the pace quite easy, reliability is always the first thing you want to try and solve."
Ricciardo recently claimed the 2015 power unit had such bad driveability it gave him whiplash in the early part of the season, but says his initial experiences with this year's version was encouraging.
Asked if he had any first impressions of the new power unit, he replied: "Not yet, to be honest. It ran pretty well to be honest but we're still conservative, we're not running it at race trim yet. I'm not sure if we'll get a chance to tomorrow but certainly next week we'll get a chance to stretch it out and see how it is. First impressions, you don't really want to look at the times but we're in the ballpark there so it's not a bad start for us.
"[Driveability] pretty much feels like it ended last season, which isn't a bad thing. It's a much better platform to work on than what we had this time last year, which was good. There wasn't any whiplash or anything like this so I'm a bit happier! It's a good start and it's probably all we can ask for at the moment."
Ricciardo says the RB12 feels very similar to how its predecessor felt at the end of 2015.
"It feels familiar, it doesn't feel strange. I think it's already positive, when a new season starts and you hop in a car you want it to feel ... last year I think we ended the year quite well, the car was good, so it feels similar, it looks good. It's the first day so we don't have everything on the car but first impressions are positive. It's early but that's all you can ask for on day one."