Lewis Hamilton anticipates a "very tough weekend" for Mercedes in Bahrain

Lewis Hamilton anticipates a "very tough weekend" in Bahrain as Mercedes seek to work on the race pace deficit seen in the Chinese Grand Prix.

A challenge all drivers currently face, of course, is how best to manage their tyres during a race weekend. Hamilton was critical of the soft tyre Pirelli brought with them to China - the performance of which lasted only a few laps - but admitted on Thursday it was a challenge he was happy enough to accept. "There's a lot of different techniques you can have. As I've said, there's so much to learn - I'm always learning. Just in the last couple of months I've learnt a couple of new techniques which happen to help quite a lot," he said. "It's a good challenge, even if people perhaps aren't enjoying it. "I don't find it really difficult. I mean, I do come out of a pit stop and I want to push and go hard to try and gain. But in actual fact, it's better to go a bit slower in those first few laps - which people are starting to notice. "That's what Kimi and Fernando and Sebastian have been doing, which has meant that their long race pace has been really good. Hamilton added: "It's still great racing, it's just different."