Lewis Hamilton has confirmed that the rotating rear wing Ferrari trialled in pre-season testing will be run again this weekend.

Dubbed the "Macarena Wing' on its appearance, the upper element on the rear wing rotates when straight-line mode is activated.

When it was pointed out that it seems odd to run the device on a weekend when there is only one practice session, Hamilton denied that further testing of the wing is required: "I don't think there's any need, we got all the running needed in testing," he said.

"I'm so grateful for the team's work, because it was actually supposed to arrive later down the line, and they worked really hard to develop it and get it brought here," he added.

"So that for me, it's great to see that the team are fighting, the team are pushing and chasing and really working overtime back at the factory to be able to bring upgrades, because that's the name of the game. Last year I didn't get to see the team's full potential in that mode, because we were focused on this year's car."

Given its nickname by team boss Fred Vasseur, Hamilton was asked the significance.

"I don't know if it has an official name," he replied. "Someone said Macarena, and I have no idea why."

Though ahead of McLaren and Red Bull in Australia, the SF-26 is still off the pace of the Mercedes. however, the seven-time world champion is confident that his team can close the gap.

"I think it's really dependent on development," he said, "the development rate is pretty steep for everyone at the moment, so people are going to be interested to see who brings upgrades over these next races.

"They do have a big... I mean you saw in qualifying it was, I don't know, 0.8 seconds or something like that, and in the race I think it was between 0.4 to 0.5 seconds when they were in clear air, which is a huge gap.

"So it's really going to be interesting to see the development, we're going to try and catch them up, and I believe we can, but I don't know, it's not going to be a sure thing."

Based on the season-opener, the Mercedes appears to have a special advantage in Straight-line Mode.

"Yes, it seems mostly on straights," says Hamilton, "so I think it would be, at the moment, everywhere on the straights. It seems more so when they open up the SLM, that's when they take a huge step, so whatever's going on in that phase is an area we need to understand, and then they seem to have a little bit more deployment. So less de-rating at the end of the straights than us so far.

"So, we've just got to work on trying to see how we can eke out more from our engine."