Nico Hulkenberg is hoping Force India can take advantage of the major regulation changes for 2014 and come out near the top.
However the German concedes that the order remains a complete mystery, more so than ever before during a pre-season, simply because everyone is starting from scratch.
“At the moment, nobody knows how this season and the new cars are going to be,” he said on Tuesday.
He’s not even sure whether the first pre-season test in Jerez will reveal any answers, especially as reliability, particularly surrounding the new V6 engines, is expected to cause a few upsets.
“There are a lot of questions which we can’t really answer until we have been on the track, running – not even the first race will be the absolute truth teller. There will be a lot of data we need to look at and analyse, work with it to go forward.
“Never before there has been a situation like this, when with just a couple of weeks before the first test nobody has any idea of where everyone is,” he added.
The levelled-playing field does present the opportunity for one or a few teams to steal a march on their rivals, but Hulkenberg warned it can also work in the opposite direction.
“It’s a pretty unique situation for everyone,” he said. “It’s a challenge, an opportunity to do something special, but on the other hand it opens up the opportunity to do mistakes, so we will need to do our work well.”
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