Mercedes insist they have overcome the problems they experienced in 2012, whereby their tyres would degrade far quicker than their rivals.
The outfit noticeabley struggled with the Pirelli tyres throughout last season, but technical chief Bob Bell is confident they now have a better understanding thanks to the work they did last year.
“Although it didn’t show it on track last year – and you could spend a day debating why that was – we did get a lot of understanding during the course of last year with the tyres and what was needed to do to manage them,” he said on Wednesday.
“It didn’t reflect on the performance but that may be for different reasons. But it did mean that we entered this season with a pretty firm understanding of what we needed to do to address the issues and hopefully we now proved that we got that right over the winter.
“So we go to this season in a much better shape, our eyes much more open to what we need to do with these tyres.”
Bell also believes it’s unlikely we’ll see a repeat of the unpredictable start to 2012 which saw seven different winners in the opening seven races.
“It will be less of a shock than it possibly was at the start of last season,” he said of the 2013 tyres.
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