2014 Australian Grand Prix Sunday - Australian Grand Prix

Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes up front is something most have been predicting since the cars first hit the track at Jerez in January, but our poleman insists he always kept calm.

"You guys were hyping us up constantly, and I think for us as a team it's always important to keep expectations low – it's a sensible approach.

"When one of the guys says 'why don't you bask in your glory' or the potential of being fast, and you arrive and it's not the case, you look like an idiot.

"Really we're just trying to keep our feet on the ground and take it one step at a time.

"Of course as we come here it's really incredible to see the car come together, and to be able to drive it and see the performance we have so far, it's a true showing of how strong this team really is."

Nico Rosberg

Nico Rosberg is already thinking about clearing Daniel Ricciardo's Red Bull out of the way at the earliest opportunity. He wants a straight fight for victory with team-mate Lewis Hamilton (which Mercedes says it's up for, having clarified its team orders stance).

"Of course it will be important to try to pass him," said Rosberg of Ricciardo. "I am sure I have a good opportunity to do so. So I will try to do that.

"But even with the starts, with this new engine, it is still a learning process and it is going to take some time to optimise even that.

"I don't know how optimised Red Bull are – hopefully not so optimised, maybe I have an advantage at the start and if I get him that will be a very important step."

Fernando Alonso

Fernando Alonso set the pace in the first session of the year on Friday morning, and is eyeing a podium after qualifying fifth in the lead Ferrari. But he's pretty sure he knows who's going to win today - and he doesn't think it will be a red car.

"First position in the first practice was a bit unreal. Mercedes are a bit ahead of everyone, and we want to change that situation in the first few grands prix."

Back in 10th on the grid, Jenson Button believes his McLaren is in pretty good shape, and just struggled to get a clear lap in around yellows at the end of Q2.

"In the wet the car was working fine. But when I came in and put tyres on at the end it was so difficult to get a lap in.

"The car was working really well in the wet, I was very happy with the pace. Quickest in wet conditions, which we expected. But at the end the yellow flags hurt us and ruined any chance of getting a lap in."

Valtteri Bottas

Williams was one of the big talking points pre-season, as the FW36 appeared to show Mercedes-bothering pace in Bahrain.

Valtteri Bottas and Felipe Massa looked decent in the dry, but struggled with rear instability in the wet final stages of qualifying and wound up only ninth and 10th on the timesheet.

To make matters worse, Bottas will start from 15th thanks to a five-place grid penalty for changing a gearbox after the final free practice session.

BEN ANDERSON spoke to the team's chief test and support engineer Rod Nelson yesterday, who explained the rationale for the swap.

"We were concerned because it had to do six races. We discussed taking the hit later on and seeing how we got on but we don’t want to be in a race where it stops us so we're better off taking the hit now.

"A five place grid penalty is not great but we know we're reasonably competitive and we know we can fight back quite well.

"We don't want any DNFs. We'd rather take five places on the grid than do half the race in the lead and stop!

"If you think a lot of other people will have reliability problems then you tend to be more conservative because you know you can pick up points just by being there."

Kamui Kobayashi

While Caterham was celebrating getting straight into Q2 at the opener, Kobayashi was under no illusions. The Japanese returnee and rookie team-mate Marcus Ericsson managed only three laps between them on a troubled Friday, and Kobayashi didn't think the qualifying boost should be overstated.

Asked what the team could still improve, he replied: "I have to say everything, because we are not happy at all.

"To go from 98 to 100 per cent is really difficult, but right now we're about 20 per cent; we can improve by about 80 per cent, which means we have a lot of potential to improve.

"We have nothing to lose and it's pretty exciting. I think it's a nice challenge."

Max Chilton

Bianchi's team-mate Max Chilton still thinks the team's points are still on the cards today thanks to its promising reliability.

"I would like to think that we haven't got any major reliability issues so we could do a race distance, and at times on Friday we were 14th/15th," he said.

Romain Grosjean and Pastor Maldonado were only 20th and 22nd in qualifying in a car that still trails its rivals substantially in the mileage stakes.

When EDD STRAW spoke to the Lotus duo yesterday, both men were confident that the team was solving each problem it encountered - the trouble was new issues kept coming along.

"These are problems we should have seen in winter testing if we could have but there were too many other problems that were hiding it and we didn't discover it," said Grosjean, who reckoned most of the troubles could be put down to starting testing late.

Lotus didn't make it to Jerez in January (insisting at the time that was a strategic move not a sign of crisis) and only covered 1288km of testing in total compared to the 4973km that table-topper Mercedes managed.

Full testing data rundown