Mercedes technical director James Allison believes there are many benefits to keeping taps on the opposition during testing, contradicting the perception that teams are focused only on their own work before the season gets underway.

While everyone is devoted first and foremost to advancing their own developments, Allison insists nothing of what goes on up and down the pitlane is lost on Mercedes' engineers who monitor, collect and analyse all the information they can retrieve, and which may partly help their own course of development actions.

"We might pretend that we are focused only on ourselves, but we fool no-one," says Allison.

“We look, in excruciating detail, at what the others are up to.

"Our strategists pore over all the available information, trying to deduce the pecking order from the patterns in the lap times and GPS traces.

"Our aerodynamicists and designers examine a huge and growing archive of photos, looking for interesting innovations," he adds.

Putting an ear to the ground is all part of the sport's gamesmanship and a team's ability to gain an unfair advantage. Sifting through the data, info or innuendo doesn't always yield a tangible piece of evidence, but in the odd case when it does, it can prove valuable.

"We listen to the pit-lane gossip and try to build up from the myriad nonsense whether there are any repeated themes that have a ring of truth to them," explains the British engineer.

"The sadder ones amongst us even read the end of day press releases, trying to see between the lines of quotes for any hint that a team is sounding a little smug, or whistling to keep its spirits up.

"Some of this we do because we are obsessive – because we love the sport and because we can’t help ourselves. But some of it carries real value," insists Allison.

"The end result of all this effort is a composite picture of the strengths and weaknesses of our opposition, which in turn feeds our own development decisions in the weeks and months ahead."

Reading precisely between the lines and deciphering the results of Barcelona's two weeks of pre-season, pundits appear to put Mercedes at the front of the field in Melbourne.

Regardless of the speculation, Allison is confident Mercedes starts the season with a solid and sane foundation with its new W09 Silver Arrows.

"We think we have learned that we are starting on a solid footing," he says.

"The W09 has been reliable, it has been predictable, it doesn’t overheat, it has been pretty well balanced, and it seems like it is fast enough to compete at the sharp end of the grid in Melbourne."

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