Lewis Hamilton said it will be difficult for him to adjust his driving style the way he needs to in order to get the best out of Ferrari’s car this year.

He was encouraged by his performance during parts of last week’s Bahrain Grand Prix but said he will have to work hard to ensure he does not slip back into old habits this weekend.

“Every driver has a driving style and my driving style has worked for many, many years,” he told the official F1 channel. “Naturally, you adapt it a little bit over time, but this one needs a bit more of a drastic shift.

“I found a couple of things that worked in the last race. Implementing that everywhere I go will be a challenge and I know that, particularly when you’re in qualifying and you really need to push to get that extra bit, I can imagine myself falling straight back to my old ways.

“So that’s something I’m just going to have to really stay patient with and diligent with which I’m going to start from tomorrow.”

He said his team mate Charles Leclerc’s years of experience driving Ferrari’s cars allows him to go into each weekend with a good starting point for his car’s set-up.

“Charles has obviously driven this car for a long time and the driving style he has worked perfectly with the car,” said Hamilton. “He loves sliding the rears. He likes a really oversteery car, which is really impressive to see.

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“From the moment we get there at the weekend, he doesn’t really change the car a huge amount. They kind of know where to start from the previous years.

“I’ve tried pretty much everything now with the car, so I’ve learnt what does and pretty much doesn’t work. And then in terms of the inputs that I put into the car, I’m adjusting those to hopefully start to extract more performance from it. I hope that I can do it this weekend, but we’ll see.”

Hamilton said the high-speed nature of the Jeddah circuit means he will have to play himself in over the practice sessions in order to apply what he’s learned about the SF-25 so far.

“My focus this weekend is driving style, really getting on top of the circuit, getting into a rhythm,” he said. “This is a circuit where, a bit like Monaco or Baku, you have to get into a rhythm as early as possible and then just make incremental gains from there and not be over-driving et cetera.

“So I’ve got a lot of work to do to adapt the way that I approach corners but it’s not impossible. It might just take a little bit of time but hopefully not too long.”

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