Michael Schumacher has said he has no qualms about travelling to Bahrain next month, the Mercedes driver confident that the authorities will ensure everything goes smoothly.

Despite the continued threat of protests, at the very least, Schumacher insists he is happy to travel to the Gulf state for the fourth round of the championship.

"I'm honestly pretty relaxed to go there," the seven-time champ told reporters at Sepang. "From our perspective, one is obviously that we're going to be very well looked after, because they might foresee whatever and will be prepared.

"I've quite a few good friends over there and I'm pretty sure that for them it's a very important event and they just want to make everybody happy," he continued. "If you look around the world, you probably find other places where there might be the possibility that we could have the same reasons to think about and we don't. So at the end of the day, I'm pretty sure that they're going to do their utmost and we're going to be OK."

Melbourne winner Jenson Button opted to take Formula One's version of the fifth amendment. "I think for us this is a very difficult subject and personally, from my point of view, we need to look to the FIA - for all of us - for common sense," he said. "We will go with what they have to say."

Check out our Thursday gallery, here.