Toto Wolff says Mercedes has a lot of potential to unlock from its W13 Silver Arrow but believes there will be all to play for next weekend in Bahrain.
Mercedes exited pre-season testing as a team that appeared unable to challenge the performance of its Red Bull and Ferrari rivals.
While the doubters believe that Mercedes has been purposefully downplaying its prospects and upholding its typical pre-season conservative stance, there was no denying the troubled on-track behavior of its W13 at Sakhir.
But given the Brackley squad's engineering resources, one wouldn't be surprised if the championship winning team returned to Sakhir with some extra performance in its bags.
"The start of a new Formula One season is always exciting, and this year more than most," commented Wolff in Mercedes Bahrain GP preview.
"With new technical and sporting regulations, there is so much to learn and discover as this new season begins.
"Barcelona was a productive first test of the W13, then we brought a big update to Bahrain for the pre-season test which resulted from a huge effort by the whole team.
"We completed good mileage, had solid reliability, and learned a lot about our new car, but it was not a straightforward three days for us."
"We tried plenty of set-up options and made good progress in understanding our limitations, and there's still plenty of room for us to improve further."
Porpoising and wild understeer were the two crucial problems that Mercedes' engineers were focused on ahead of this week's curtain raiser in Bahrain.
Whether the German outfit's efforts to mitigate those issues prove successful as soon as next weekend, only time will tell. But Wolff is confident that Mercedes' new contender will eventually perform according to the team's expectations.
"There is a lot of potential to unlock in the W13, and we know how much we relish the challenge of understanding the car and extracting the maximum from it, and this will be our focus for the coming days, weeks and months," added Wolff.
"It's hard to say exactly where we'll fit in the competitive order this weekend in Bahrain, but that's what makes this new season and new era so exciting.
"It's a clean slate for everyone and all to play for. Like we always say, what we love about F1 is that the stopwatch never lies - and we will get our first understanding of the competitive truth on Saturday in qualifying.
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