I doubt there is a single person in the Formula 1 pitlane who believed that a new grand prix team under the current, hugely complicated, regulations could come in and be genuinely competitive from day one.
After all, no one - including the might of Toyota and its mega budgets - has achieved this for many years. The last start-up teams to come in and score regularly in the first season were Sauber in 1993 and my own Jordan team in '91. Even Stewart, which had a second place in Monaco in its first season in '97, didn't score regularly at first.
But back in the early 1990s, things were very different and certainly easier. The cars still had a gear lever, and the steering wheel was still black and round and with relatively few buttons.