Nico Rosberg admits he doesn't know if he'll be able to challenge for victory in Bahrain because Mercedes might struggle with its tyres this weekend.

14268 - Rosberg cautious on tyre usage

The team appeared to overcome its tyre problems in the cooler temperatures of China as Rosberg took pole position and won the race - his maiden grand prix victory. When looking at how competitive Mercedes will be in Bahrain Rosberg said that the team had definitely made progress with the tyres but he was unsure if it would translate in to a race-winning car on Sunday.

"I've had some very good memories here, but again it's difficult to know where we're going to be exactly," Rosberg said. "In Shanghai of course we did very well, but previously we did have a few issues in the races but it's possible that it's going to be a bit more difficult here.

"At the same time of course the engineers and everybody have really been making some good progress on the car setup-wise and things like that. We're learning very quickly, so it wasn't a coincidence that we're fast in Shanghai. No, we did a good job and got the best out of it, but the situation could be different here with the temperatures and that might prove a little bit more of a challenge."

While Rosberg said he couldn't make any predictions, he hoped that Mercedes would not be the only team affected by the high temperatures.

"That's going to be our main challenge this weekend again because we still had some issues very recently in warmer temperatures so it's difficult to foresee how we're going to go here. For sure it's going to be difficult but hopefully for everybody it's going to be difficult and maybe we can do well again."