Despite its dominant front row lockout ahead of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, Mercedes is wary of Ferrari and Red Bull's long run pace for the race itself.
Lewis Hamilton took a stunning pole in Baku, 0.4s quicker than teammate Valtteri Bottas, as the world champions finished a full second up on title rivals Ferrari. Mercedes had been struggling to find a balance earlier in the weekend but looked to be in ominous form on Saturday, with six of the top ten running the team's power unit.
Ferrari just managed to keep Red Bull's Max Verstappen off the second row of the grid as the teenager hit trouble in qualifying, but their fight was more reminiscent of the battles for best of the rest behind Mercedes in its three years of unchallenged dominance before this year's rule change. Mercedes boss Toto Wolff says the data from Friday's longer runs suggest the three teams will be closely matched when the lights go out.
"Qualifying was a great turnaround for the team from Friday to Saturday and the gap we have is nice," he said. "It doesn't give a lot of indications of the gap between the three teams of Red Bull, Ferrari and us. I think in terms of the long runs I think we are evenly matched, yesterday that is the only set of data we have."
Hamilton's pole was the 66th of his career and puts him in a prime position to make another dent in Sebastian Vettel's championship lead. It was the team's second front row lockout of the year but Hamilton is not going into the grand prix expecting the two silver cars to disappear into the distance.
When asked who would be his biggest threat on Sunday, Hamilton replied: "Obviously Valtteri's been doing a great and fantastic job all weekend and showing great speed. Today he did a great, great job. It was a nice battle with him to get the pole.
"I think the Ferrari is [a threat]... I've not seen the exact gap but I think Kimi was saying the tyre temperatures was a bit of an issue. It's unusual because it's something that they normally don't struggle with. So that's an interesting fact that we have to take into account but I think in the race there'll be... It's a lot different when the car is heavy [with fuel].
"Genuinely a one-stop race, so it's going to be about consistency about how you can look after these tyres. The strategy will definitely come into play, but it's not easy. Considering that long main straight it's not actually the easiest of places to overtake as we saw in the last race. So, I think there's still going to be a close race and I think for ourselves we're in the best position as a team hopefully we can utilise that tomorrow."