Lewis Hamilton to work closely with support staff to improve car

Lewis Hamilton will head into the McLaren factory in Woking today and again demand the kind of effort that sparked the team's about turn last season.

McLaren's problems are nowhere near as acute as a year ago after building a car that languished towards the back of the field for the first half of the season.

Hamilton played an instrumental role in rallying the troops, which resulted in a strong second half of the year that yielded two wins.

Following Sunday's Bahrain GP, this year's car clearly has potential, but is lacking in pace compared to Ferrari and Red Bull.

So, Hamilton will now call on the team to throw their all into bridging the gap as soon as possible to ensure they do not concede too much ground to their rivals in the early stages.

"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," said Hamilton.

"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. We need to get some more upgrades. We have them coming throughout the year, but we need to bring as many forward as possible to close the gap. We must work out how to improve the low-speed downforce as that is really where they're taking the time away from us."