Hamilton to rally the troops

Hamilton at the McLaren factory in Woking

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Lewis Hamilton is to visit the McLaren factory in Woking on Tuesday to deliver a rallying cry to the team as they bid to close the gap on Ferrari and Red Bull.

Hamilton made a similar appearance last year and his presence seemed to do the trick as the team enjoyed a much-improved second half to the season which yielded two wins.

McLaren's problems are nowhere near as acute as 12 months ago, although while this year's model has undoubted potential, it is clearly lacking in pace compared to Ferrari and Red Bull - as demonstrated at last weekend's curtain-raiser in Bahrain.

As a result Hamilton will made his personal crusade to demand a major effort from all concerned to ensure they do not slip too far behind their rivals in the championship.

"Our pace in the race is not bad, not as bad as we first thought, but we still need to push really hard to close up to the Ferraris and Red Bulls," Hamilton explained.

"If we keep pushing then I do feel we can close the gap to these guys, and hopefully be on the top of the podium.

"It's going to be difficult in such a short time frame to do that, so I need to go back now and give the team the biggest push.

"They are all pushing flat out as it is, but one extra person or two extra people can be more of a force.

"We need to get some more upgrades. It's that simple. We have them coming throughout the year, but we need to bring as many forward as possible to close the gap.

"We need to work out how to improve the low-speed downforce because that is really where they are taking the time away from us."

Work for Button to do

More encouraging for Hamilton is the fact that he appears to have the early edge on new team-mate Jenson Button.

Hamilton convincingly outshone Button in both qualifying and Sunday's race and Mercedes GP managing director Nick Fry now believes the reigning world champion will have to reassess how to close the gap on his team-mate.

"There's clearly a gap that Jenson is going to have to close. It's absolutely self-evident," remarked Fry, who worked with Button for a number of years at Honda and Brawn GP before his move to McLaren.

"I'm sure he'll now be looking at what he can do to close the gap to Lewis, who does have home-team advantage at the moment.

"But the longer Jenson stays with the team, the more that reason goes away.

"He'll have to be looking at all aspects of his own performance, not only how he drives, but also the way he works with the team.

"Jenson will know all those things, and he's got to work hard."