Hamilton winning psychological Rosberg battle

Lewis Hamilton believes his recent victories are helping him get the better of team-mate Nico Rosberg psychologically in the battle at Mercedes.

While Rosberg leads the championship, Hamilton has won the last three grands prix to close the gap in the standings to just four points. Having comfortably won in Malaysia, the two were closely matched in Bahrain but Hamilton responded with another clear victory in China while Rosberg had to battle through the field to second place.

"In sports it's all psychological games, so of course getting good results you can't measure what effect that has on people, but I know how positive that is for me," Hamilton said. "Nico is going to be massively quick at every race we go to.

"[In China] I was determined to make sure we weren't as close as we were in the last race, and so I definitely feel a little bit more like it was in Malaysia. So I'm going to keep on working and keep with the approach that I have because it's working perfectly for me."

And Hamilton will be looking to maintain his form as Toto Wolff says Mercedes may be forced to consider employing team orders later in the season.

Hamilton and Rosberg engaged in a thrilling fight for victory at the Bahrain Grand Prix which led to Mercedes getting widespread praise for allowing its two drivers to race each other until the flag. However, while Wolff wants to be able to maintain such an approach for as long as possible, he admits that the team will have to protect results if its rivals manage to close the gap as the year goes on.

"There might be situations where you can't lose lots of time in battle if you have your enemy right up your back," Wolff told the BBC. "Bahrain was a very particular situation because our package worked very well there and we had quite a competitive advantage, so it's easier to take a decision for the sake of racing because you know you have quite a margin to the guy in third place.

"The narrower that margin gets, the more you have to look out. Our rule is that the competition is enemy number one, not your team-mate, so there might be situations in the race where you have to consider that, but we will see what happens."