Hamilton: I have zero comfortability

He told reporters ahead of the Spanish Grand Prix weekend, "At the moment I am punching below my weight - and that is not sufficient to win a world championship."

"I have zero comfortability. Since the last race l have not thought for one second that I am leading the world championship."

"At the moment we are capitalising on surrounding circumstances that have hindered the outcome of a race. I'll take it for now but in the long term I can't continue to rely on it."

The Mercedes driver was referring to his somewhat fortuitous victory at the recent Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

Hamilton continued, "If this weekend we start to get on top of the issues we have had and we are more consistent then l will be a lot happier."

"The problem is that the tyres are shifting from session to session. We change the balance of the car but it doesn't correlate It's like a moving target which we are struggling to steady. That's really what we are working on."

As for Circuit de Catalunya, Hamilton added, "We were very good here in winter testing and we have definitely improved since then. But Red Bull and Ferrari made a bigger gain than us from testing to Melbourne so we expect again a very close fight. But we left testing with a good set-up and that should help us."

Hamilton won last year's Spanish Grand Prix and, with his winner's trophy from the 2014 race, has thus won twice at the venue.