Ross Brawn believes Mercedes' hopes of victory in the Monaco Grand Prix rest on the team delivering an error free weekend in every session.
The W03's strength in slow- and medium-speed corners this season has left Nico Rosberg and Michael Schumacher as serious contenders for a win on the streets of Monte Carlo, but Brawn is aware that delivering that result will not be easy.
"We have two great drivers and we think the car is pretty good – but we have got to get everything right," explained the Mercedes team principal. "We have to have a program that flows from Thursday through to Saturday and Sunday. Last year we had Nico's accident [in FP3] and that was probably one of the factors that meant we missed some information when we got into the race. Then the tires got too hot and fell apart.
"Everything here has a consequence. If you get one thing wrong, like a reliability problem or the driver making a mistake, you lose some running and that has a consequence. So you have to be out there from the beginning, you have to have a good program and it has to flow. By keeping running you can keep on top of what the track is doing and how it is changing, so if we have a good weekend then I think we can be competitive."
Brawn thinks Monaco will be no different from other races, with tires being a key factor in determining ultimate form, but says car characteristics should be important too.
"Tires will seriously be the issue," he explained. "Barcelona was a bit of a blip for us in qualifying and probably the worst qualifying we have had this year.
"Our car has been generally better on the slow/medium parts of a track than the high-speed stuff, but different teams have different compromises in setting up cars for high speed and low speed, and everybody is clearly trying to optimize their car around low/medium speed here. So the advantage we have may not be so significant with everyone else optimizing their cars for slow/medium speed."