Briton delighted to be back on podium, highlights start as key to result.

Whilst admitting that third was as good as it was going to get for him in Barcelona, Lewis Hamilton was a happier man leaving the Circuit de Catalunya than he was departing Sakhir three weeks ago.

In the time that followed the Bahrain Grand Prix, much was written about whether the Briton was losing his grip on the form that made him the talking point of 2007 - a discussion fuelled by his surprise at being only fifth in qualifying in Spain - but Hamilton insists that he had nothing to prove coming to the first European round of the season, and was cheered by the raceday performance of his McLaren.

"Mistakes happen, [and Bahrain] was just one of those character-building... it was a learning curve, I guess," he ruminated in the post-race pres conference, "But I didn't feel that I had to come here and do anything extra, or do anything different. You know what I can do. I don't feel I need to improve it. I just wanted to come here and do a solid job for the team and get points for both of us.

"I'm really happy with where we've come, especially after not having the best qualifying. But, to see the reliability of the car, how much we could push at the end, and to see the pace of the car improving throughout the race, was quite encouraging."

With former McLaren nemesis Fernando Alonso and BMW Sauber's Robert Kubica both ahead of him on the grid, Hamilton had not appeared to confident of a good result on Sunday but, after two races outside of the top three, he admitted that it was nice to be back on the podium.

"Absolutely, it is good to be back," he beamed, "Obviously, when we qualified fifth, we knew that it would be very difficult to beat the Ferraris, but the key was to get a good start and make as many places as possible. Fortunately, I was able to do that.

"We sort of had a feeling that Fernando would be a bit lighter, and that didn't cause us any problems, but, especially towards the middle stint and towards the end, I had to try and keep up with Felipe [Massa] as I knew he was [running] a lap shorter than me, but they seem to look after their rear tyres a little bit better than us. In the last stint, I was able to keep quite close, and was pushing and pushing right to the last lap."

With all teams completing thousands of miles in testing at the Circuit de Catalunya, races don't tend to produce much in the way of passing, underlining Hamilton's claim that the start was key - especially with the top few teams all proving pretty evenly matched on pace.

"It is amazing how close all the cars are," he marvelled, "Even Robert was extremely close to me - I kept looking in the mirrors at a certain point and he was always in the exact same spot. It is very impressive that all the teams are so close, and it is good for the team.

"I know from past experiences in F3 that Robert is one of the hardest to overtake. He is very aggressive on the first lap, but I was able to get up the inside of him. I was pretty much past him and just had to make sure that I covered my ground. It was pretty smooth sailing from there.

"Qualifying fifth didn't really put us in a great spot to win the race, but we knew we had quite a good strategy and, at the beginning, I just had to try and make up as many places as possible. It was great to get past Robert, otherwise we would probably have finished behind him.

"I just immediately moved to the right, noticed that I seemed to have good traction and seemed to be moving at a similar pace to Robert. I moved to the right, and I think Robert was focusing on going to the left, perhaps to slipstream one of [the Ferraris], but I was carrying so much speed that there was no time for him to react and go back to the right. I don't think he hesitated, but I don't think he was expecting it."