Mercedes the winner of Jerez phony war

There are no clear winners in testing, no podium to stand on or tens of thousands of spectators to acclaim (or boo) you in victory.

But with the 2014 Formula 1 season already four days old, some are in better shape than others as the form book starts to be drafted.

There are certainly clear losers. It would be foolish to award the wooden spoon for Jerez 2014 to anyone other than Red Bull with a paltry 21 laps completed over four days before packing up early on Friday. To nobody's great surprise, Daniel Ricciardo managed just seven stuttering laps today before F1's dominant force of the past four years headed home.

But you don't get any awards for being top of the timesheets during the winter. In fact, the timing screens are perhaps less relevant than ever with the new 1.6-litre turbocharged V6 engines still in their early stages of running. Instead, the priority was always mileage.

That's good news for Mercedes, which logged 3974km at Jerez, damned near twice the distance covered by Ferrari (albeit with the advantage of an extra car-and-a-half thanks to its four entries combined with Marussia not running until day three).

It was something of a double whammy for Mercedes, as its works team was the one doing a good proportion of that running. Forget the pace, the sheer fact of covering such a vast distance is extremely good news for the Silver Arrows.

Mercedes was able to put some big numbers on its pitboards © XPB

Not only does it bode well for the fundamental reliability of the engine - although it should be stressed there were plenty of glitches that required troubleshooting - but it also means Mercedes should now be the market leader in terms of understanding how best to take on the challenge of managing the energy produced by these new and complex engines in a race situation.

"Just do a lot of laps, because it's laps that will show you where the problems in the car are, where the weaknesses are, what we need to focus on," said Nico Rosberg after his stint during the first half of the day.

"And by doing all these laps, we learned a lot of things now. That's a good thing."

A very good thing, you would have to say. Nobody thought that a race simulation was likely to be on the cards for the first test, yet that was exactly what Rosberg did this morning at Jerez.

While impossible to make any kind of judgement on the pace, both because there was very little to compare it with and as a result of the damp conditions, it was a superb achievement. After all, it has been said regularly that simply finishing the season-opening Australian Grand Prix should be worth a hatful of points.

"Today, we managed to do an entire race simulation with a couple of laps on top," said Rosberg. "That's a really good start to the year."

As for team-mate Lewis Hamilton, he declared the week's work by Mercedes as "fantastic". In among all the usual caveats about the meaning of testing, this was a powerful way to describe an opening test and summed up a team that is giving out a very buoyant vibe.

The atmosphere in the Mercedes garage is buoyant © LAT

During the phony war that is pre-season testing, team personnel usually try to contain their excitement even when they have a pretty good idea of how things are shaping up. At Jerez, it wasn't so difficult for those at Mercedes to contain themselves because there simply is not enough data available to have any idea where the car actually is on pace.

Being able to run and run is a pre-requisite for success in Melbourne. But it is no guarantee of it.

And even if it is, that's not to say the Mercedes works team will have it all its own way. Williams and McLaren topped the times overall and, far more importantly, the new MP4-29 looked very well-poised on track.

The bottom line for any engine manufacturer will be to get the engine sorted and then get its works team to the front. For Mercedes, or at least the bit of the company based in Brackley, simply having the best motor would be no guarantee of success either.

The key would be to ensure the Mercedes-propelled cars are up front and then fight it out with McLaren, Force India and Williams. How that battle will pan out is impossible to say, but by the one metric that means anything right now - distance covered - Mercedes is in excellent shape, albeit with the caveat that, in terms of laps per car, Ferrari is in the same area even if total mileage is dramatically less.

The principle of 'get to the front then fight among yourselves' does not only apply to engine manufacturers. Let's say Mercedes does continue its "fantastic" pre-season form and heads to Melbourne as favourite with its works team at the front of the grid. There is still the fascinating question of which driver will prevail.

Hamilton is reputed as an old-school, pedal-to-the-metal driver. It's a rather crude way to characterise him, for Hamilton has shown an aptitude to adapt his style to the demands of F1 as it has evolved since his first season when the sport was very much a sprint between refuelling stops, but it's not without an element of truth.

Will it be a battle between Mercedes-powered cars when the season starts? © LAT

Rosberg, by contrast, is seen as not as ultra-fast over a lap, but a shrewder, more cerebral driver. This is what makes the match-up between the pair potentially so fascinating this year.

So, given his character and occasional pops at the tyre-management formula of 2011-'13, it was no surprise that Hamilton became a popular person to quiz about comments from Bernie Ecclestone questioning the new 2014 regulations. Hamilton wasn't biting.

"Formula 1 is Formula 1," he said. "I don't really have much to say about it. It feels good, there's lots of power, so it's a new challenge for everybody."

He's right too. Yes, some of the nose designs are unsightly, but having spent some time watching trackside earlier today there was no lack of spectacle. At times, Fernando Alonso had the crowd gasping as he slid the rear through the chicane in damp conditions.

That's the bottom line. People can complain about the lack of spectacle and F1's failure to be crowd-pleasing all they want. But unlike Ecclestone, the crowd was here to make its own judgement.

And for all the column inches, blogs and Twitter feeds full of complaints and criticisms, it's that crowd that was ideally placed to draw its own conclusions.

They seemed pretty pleased. And that's what really matters in a sport that relies on its fans for its very existence.