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Lewis Hamilton credits his education in karting for nailbiting Bahrain victory

Rosberg duel reminded Hamilton of pair's dices as juniors

Lewis Hamilton says he wouldn't have been able to hang on to victory of the Bahrain GP - in what is being billed as the duel of the century - without the skills he learnt in karting as a youth.

Rosberg's does at least retain the lead of the World Championship with his performance in Bahrain a vast improvement on his underwhelming outing in Malaysia where he was defeated by the remarkable margin of 17 seconds as Hamilton's claimed the first of his two victories in a week. In the wake of losing out on pole position to his team-mate on Saturday, Hamilton voluntarily identified Rosberg as the faster driver around the Sakhir circuit and confirmed after his gruelling victory a day later that he would be studying the data from Rosberg's W05 to understand his disadvantage. "A lot of the advantages that I had in the last race Nico found them as we came here and applied them and did even better, so I've got to go now and find out what he did better than me and see if I can improve for the next race," acknowledged Hamilton. If Hamilton's victory in Bahrain was built on the grounding he received in karting as a youth, his prospects for next week's Chinese GP - where Rosberg claimed his first F1 victory two years ago - may now be dependent on homework of an altogether different kind.

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