Ross Brawn believes that his team getting its tires into the "sweet spot" of performance was key to Nico Rosberg delivering his first victory for Mercedes in China.
With the squad having headed to Shanghai aware that it needed to work on solving the tire problems that had blighted its performances in the first two races, Rosberg was dominant in Sunday's event. Brawn believes that rather than the result showing the relative performance of the cars, he thinks it was all about tires.
"I think with these tires, if you get it right on the day then you can do what we did today," explained Brawn. "You can see what is very strong opposition perhaps not quite hitting the sweet spot, and having what happened today.
"We managed to get it to work and others didn't, and that will be the characteristic of this year. I think the teams will all get better in using tires and, as they get better, the occasions when you don't get it right will be fewer. But today we got the tires right, we got the setup right and we saw the results."
After Mercedes overheated its tires in Australia and did not get them warm enough in Malaysia, Brawn said that he was actually fearful of the temperatures dropping in China.
"We didn't want it to get too cold funnily enough, because when it gets cold the rubber can start to grain, and you can struggle and fall out of window. We were anticipating it being a bit warmer, and we set the car up for that. But the tires worked perfectly and James [Vowles], our strategy guy, called the race absolutely perfectly in terms of it being two stop. The tires were just starting to ease off as we came in the pits and that side worked out very well."
Brawn also said that he was not too fearful of Jenson Button threatening Rosberg for victory if the McLaren's last stop had not been delayed.
"We were keeping a pretty close eye on him, and obviously it was a big relief that they had a slow stop and fell into that pack, because obviously they should have come out in front of it. It would have been much more of a race, though. I haven't really spoken to Nico, but I have a feeling that he had a bit in reserve."