Does the cloud over McLaren have a silver lining?

You rarely find anything in Formula 1 upon which every team will agree. But, as the garage doors came down at the end of testing at Barcelona last Sunday, signalling the end of track action until free practice at the Australian Grand Prix, there was pretty much universal consensus about one thing.

The best has got better this year. Mercedes is everyone's out-and-out favourite for early glory.

Barring an unexpected incident or disastrous mechanical failure, no one in F1 is expecting anything other than a front low lock-out for Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton in Melbourne.

Reliability problems meant Jenson Button had few reasons to smile during pre-season testing © LAT

For much of testing the silver cars have focused on tyre evaluation, long runs and aerodynamic measurements, giving as little as possible away about the W06 Hybrid's relative performance.

Then a stunning soft-tyre run from Rosberg last Friday afternoon, 1.2 seconds faster than the next closest man - Valtteri Bottas in the Williams, also on the soft tyres - made everyone sit up and take notice of just how much of an advantage Mercedes could have.

When Jenson Button was told that Rosberg had complained about being unhappy with how his car felt on that quick lap, all he could do was smile.

"I think he might be a bit spoiled, that one," said the 2009 champion. "Mercedes is miles in front of anyone."

Most worrying for the opposition is that Mercedes led the Barcelona times without ever trying the supersofts. Its winter-topping best lap was done on softs - so there could easily be another few tenths in the W06 even if it was running on fuel vapours...

While stunning one-off laps never tell the true story of testing, the longer-run data is just as promising for Mercedes. Race simulations from Williams, Red Bull and Ferrari all appeared quite close at times - but they were around 0.7 seconds per lap adrift of what Mercedes was capable of. That's not the sort of gap that is going to be closed down in the short term.

Testing might have given us a firm answer about what is going to happen at the front of the grid for Melbourne, but it has also left plenty of questions about how the competitive picture is going to develop elsewhere. In fact, the unshakeable conviction of how F1 is going to shape up for Mercedes at the start of the year is in complete contrast to the total uncertainty we have about what McLaren is going to be capable of by the end of the season.

Other than Button's 101 laps on the second day of the final test, McLaren's pitboard operators weren't overly busy © LAT

Regardless of what the official communications say, the early phase of McLaren and Honda's renewed relationship has not been as productive as either team or engine manufacturer would have liked. Niggling reliability problems - allied to Fernando Alonso's crash - have hampered it hugely and it is heading into the year well behind schedule.

Few yardsticks could have provided such indubitable proof of how disrupted McLaren's winter has been than the fact that Force India managed just 31 miles fewer with its new VJM08 than McLaren did with the MP4-30 during all of pre-season testing. The VJM08 only arrived with two-and-a-half days of running left.

McLaren may well be facing some tough times at the start of the campaign, but still there remains a feeling that when the ingredients properly come together, the results will be good. On track we have seen very little of the full potential of the car and engine. But off track there are good clues about just why there remains this mood of quiet confidence at McLaren about what can be achieved in the latter stage of the campaign - despite the present headaches.

Button and Alonso have both talked of promise in the package, but it was Kevin Magnussen who gave us some more solid insight at Barcelona last weekend about just why there is this positivity.

Kevin Magnussen was glowing in his praise of the 2015 chassis. © LAT

It's all down to the car. Comparing the MP4-30 with its predecessor, he said: "It is not an evolution of last year's car, it feels completely different. It is very consistent, very predictable, and very smooth in a way. Just driveable. Whereas last year's car probably had more downforce, it was much more sharp, on the limit and unpredictable.

"On many occasions that was a problem, because when you wear out your tyres and the rear starts to move around more, you want a predictable car. This year's car is more smooth and predictable and driveable."

It's the best confirmation yet that chief engineer Peter Prodromou's influence in abandoning McLaren's old mantra of chasing ultimate theoretical downforce could be ready to pay off in delivering a car that its drivers can use at the limit. There is a long way to go for the boys in Woking still, and even making the chequered flag is going to be achievement in the early races.

Right now, Mercedes is setting F1's benchmark for pace and reliability once again. It's just a question of how long it is going to take the opposition, including McLaren, to make up the gap - if they can.