Having fully supported Mercedes BS in terms of the Red Bull and Ferrari power units having the edge in pre-season testing, not forgetting their unified dismissal that the compression ratio saga was anything to worry about, McLaren, Williams and Alpine will have headed into the Melbourne weekend feeling somewhat confident.
Quite how they felt as Russell and Antonelli locked-out the front row, almost 0.9s clear of the nearest similarly powered car, only they can know, their frustration further compounded the following day.
As if to rub theirs, and indeed everyone's, noses in it, moments after taking the flag seemingly the entire Mercedes team was sporting T-shirts emblazoned with a large P1.
While drivers, with the exception of the Mercedes pair (natch!), and fans voice their unhappiness with the rules overhaul, the German manufacturer's customer teams are even more unhappy at seemingly being left short of a few pages of the AMG F1 W17 EQ Performance instruction manual.
"We have work to do to exploit the potential of the power unit, which, once I see the potential that HPP is extracting, looks like there's more that is available," said a somewhat diplomatic Andrea Stella. "Now, it's not obvious how you do that," he admitted, "for us, we are on a journey of knowledge, but certainly a journey that is at an earlier stage than the works team.
"The works team and HPP will have worked together for a long time," he continued. "So, they will have collaborated, talked about how to use the power unit, that's fair enough. But we'll definitely intensify the collaboration with HPP because our understanding is that there is some low-hanging fruit that we should be able to cash in.
"What they are doing shows they understand a lot more, and maybe the flow of information hasn't been as anticipated," he added, no doubt his fingers tightly crossed behind his back.
"What Mercedes are doing on the power unit is something that caught us off guard," said James Vowles, surely the most paid-up member of the Mercedes Glee Club. "It took qualifying for us to really see just how off the pace we are."
Asked about the potential deficit, he replied: "In that regard, it's probably three-tenths, something in that ballpark.
"It is not an open door, as you would imagine," he said of Mercedes sharing such valuable information, "because that's where the performance is found. So, it is down to us to try and work around it.
"We have to acknowledge that we, as Williams, do not have the sophistication that they have in other technologies, and definitely that's on us."
Somewhat naively, the former Mercedes man believes that in its efforts to 'understand' the Mercedes power unit, Williams could discover information that the German manufacturer has yet to find.
"I would say the converse is that there's some inherent knowledge they have which we don't," he said. "And that's down to us to figure out."
Curiously, over at Alpine, MD Steve Nielsen is more supportive of Mercedes stance.
Insisting that the German manufacturer is "giving us as much assistance as they can", he added: All I know is the working relationship with them is very good. They're also learning. I'm sure they're passing the stuff on as quickly as they can to us. And we're appreciative of it when we get it. They'll learn. We'll get better."
Of course, Nielsen's positivity towards the German manufacturer has absolutely nothing to do with speculation that Toto Wolff is considering a bid for a stake in the Enstone-based outfit.
Back to McLaren, and Stella admits that concerns has already been raised.
"The discussion with HPP about having more information has been going on for weeks," he said. "Because even in testing, we were pretty much going on track, running the car, looking at the data and, 'oh, that's what we have, good, now we have to react to what we have'.
"But that's not how you work in Formula 1. In Formula 1, what happens on track, you simulate before, you know what is happening, you know what you are programming, you know how the car is going to behave.
"So you also have your plans as to how you evolve it that you have figured out before because you know what you are expecting from the car. So, I have to say, since we are a customer team, this is the first time that we feel we are on the back foot even when it comes to the ability to predict how the car will behave and the ability to anticipate how we can improve the car.
"There's one more factor, though, and this is perhaps for you useful to understand what kind of Formula 1 we are experiencing," said the Italian. "Everything is very sensitive.
"Why are the tools important? Because you may change the amount of lift and coast before Turn 1 and this affects the deployment through the entire lap, which is also what puts off the drivers when they have to optimise the driving, the battery, because this is now a fundamental way of driving a Formula 1 now, you are driving the battery.
"So, when everything is so sensitive, the reliance on the tools is even more important. Like with last year, where everything was calmer in terms of power unit behaviour and electrical energy deployment, we had the tools, but we weren't so reliant on the tools.
"But now it's pretty much all about the tools because changing a detail in one place affects something much bigger in a very faraway place of the circuit, which is just difficult to predict."
But perhaps the situation is best summed up by the drivers.
"We have a lot to try and figure out," admitted Lando Norris on Sunday. "The good thing is we have a big gap to the cars behind, a similar issue to Red Bull, the bad thing is we have a big gap to the cars ahead.
"Today was, I think, more of an understanding that we're nowhere near where we need to be with the car and we've got to improve that," he added.
Meanwhile, of the 2025 world champion's criticism of the new rules, George Russell said: "We weren't happy with how stiff the cars were last year and the porpoising, and everyone had a bad back, and drivers were complaining about that, but the McLaren drivers said there was no porpoising, even though we watched their car and they were porpoising.
"Everyone's always looking to themselves," he continued, without a hint of irony, "we're all selfish in this regard. The truth is, last year we had the same engine as them and McLaren did a better job than us, and they beat us. Now they've got the same engine as us, the same as Williams and the same as Alpine, and so far we've done a better job than them. So that's just how the game goes."
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