Hamilton talks up McLaren's chances

Hamilton trailed home third in Sunday's season-opening race in Bahrain behind a Ferrari one-two led by Fernando Alonso on his debut for the Maranello marque.

Although the 25-year-old finished 25 seconds adrift of his former McLaren team-mate, who now has 22 wins to his name, Hamilton was encouraged by his second half of the race.

That came after the first pit stop - now limited to simply a tyre change due to a ban on refuelling - when he managed to leapfrog the Mercedes of Nico Rosberg who had held up the Briton early on.

Hamilton knows McLaren are not on the pace with Ferrari and Red Bull, who saw Sebastian Vettel slip from first to fourth late on, due to a spark plug failure that resulted in a loss of power.

But he also appreciates they are not that far away either as he said: "I think we saw the true pace of our car after the first pit stop.

"I was right on Nico's tail for the whole of the first stint, but unfortunately I wasn't able to pull out the time I needed.

"The Ferrari guys were just pulling away. I would come onto the back straight and they were already around the next corner.

"The gap increased and there was nothing I could do at that time, but as soon as I got in some clean air and there were some new tyres on, the car felt great.

"The pace I had was quite good, so it's good to know we were able to match it and do similar times to the guys at the front.

"It shows we're not as far away as we thought we may have been, so we're not in a bad position."