Rosberg remaining cool on title chances

Nico Rosberg says his Mercedes team will not start to believe their own hype until after the first race of the season in Australia.

The Brackley outfit have been the standout performers in testing and are currently the favourites to succeed in the first year of F1’s new V6 era.

However, Mercedes did encounter a few problems in their final laps in Bahrain and have been working hard in their quest to correct any faults ahead of next weekend’s opening race in Melbourne.

With a number of pundits backing Rosberg and colleague Lewis Hamilton to go all the way in 2014, the team could begin to get complacent but the German says it would be foolish for them to start believing any of the expectation surrounding them as the new rules mean things are likely to be extremely different when the season starts next Sunday.

“This year, after completing the final test in Bahrain, I returned to the factory at Brackley for the final preparations in the simulator and went straight on to Melbourne from there,” he said. “Overall, I think our winter testing programme went better than expected.

“Having said that, the first grand prix is the first real opportunity to judge how well we have done against our competition. Pre-season doesn’t tell the full story, especially this year with the new regulations.”

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