As the row over his own engine continues, Mercedes boss, Toto Wolff suggests that in fact it is the Red Bull power unit that is the current benchmark.

In what might be seen as a classic smoke and mirrors approach, Wolff claims that the, Ford-backed, Red Bull engine is the one to watch this season.

"Look at the energy deployment today," he told reporters during the lunch break on the first day of testing. "They are able to deploy far more energy on the straights than everybody else.

"I mean, over consecutive laps," he added. "On a single lap we have seen it before, but now we have seen it on ten consecutive laps with the same kind of straight-line deployment.

"I would say that as per today, on the first official day of testing, which is always with a caveat, they have set the benchmark today," he declared.

"I was hoping that they were worse than they are," the Austrian admitted, "because they have done a very good job. The car, the power unit are the benchmark at the moment I would say... and then obviously you have Max in the car, that combination is strong."

The Austrian's claim comes amidst continued fears over what might transpire in Melbourne (and beyond) unless a solution - acceptable to all involved - is found to the current row over his own engines, which many believe to be the true benchmark, once the teams actually show their hands in the latter stages of next week's test.

"I think everybody was a little bit too excited about the performance of the Mercedes engine-powered teams,' he insisted. "And I think that our colleagues from the other brands have been carried away a little bit, that this could be embarrassing, which I don't think it is at all."

However, pushed on the issue, the Austrian, who only a week ago warned rival manufacturers to get their s**t together, admitted that the matter is far from resolved.

"I'm a little bit more confused in the recent weeks about how it came to the point now that it suddenly became a topic, because until last Friday, I was given the impression that things wouldn't change," he said, before adding, with a wry grin: "However, I read an article from an Italian website that said things are going to change, so I thought that we should know."

"It's not only the teams," he added, in terms of a change to the regulations, "you need the votes from the governing body, and you need the votes from the commercial rights holder, and if they decided to share an opinion and an agenda, then you're screwed.

"I think that the kind of lobbying from the other engine manufacturers has massively ramped up over the last few months," he continued. "I mean, secret meetings, secret letters to the FIA, which obviously there's no such thing as a secret at this point. And that has brought it to this situation.

"You know, in this sport, it's full of surprises, so there is never a situation where you can say you're sure about anything. All along the process, when you design an engine, you're keeping the FIA very close to the decisions you make, and that's what we did.

"And we have had all the assurances that what we did was according to the rules. It's not even like we're talking about some massive performance gain and that's what it was, but I think all of our competitors got a little bit aggrieved and lobbied the FIA for a long time.

"If it becomes a regulation, you need to adhere to the regulation. And if you can't adhere to the regulation, then the FIA needs to come out with some kind of invention, how to adjust for that, and that's unclear to us.

"Of course, you develop an engine over a long time, and you have lead times, and if you were told you can't operate the engine in the way you have developed it, that could be quite damaging for the performance."

Asked about the possibility of legal action, he said: "There is no such scenario as we would sue anyone. In Formula 1, in my opinion, it is more essential than ever that you know what the rules are, but engineering ingenuity is always respected, and that's why we always respect the governance of the sport. If the governance of the sport decides to change the rules, be it against our position or for our position, we just have to get along with it.

"It's just a few horsepower," he said of a potential performance gain. "In England you would say a couple, which is more like two and three. So almost negligible risk to make any major difference over the course of a grand prix. It's more about what is the precedent we are setting, what are the complications of introducing a new rule, how do you monitor it, in which way do you adjust if you felt the need to adjust, how will it influence ADUO, the engine balancing system.

"Because after six races everybody who believes he is in ADUO and has the chance to catch up, you could immediately start to look at compression ratio and develop the engine completely differently, because you know after race six you have the possibility of changing your engine. So the kind of unknown consequences are immense and unquantifiable."

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