Hamilton talks up 'party mode' as Mercedes chide Renault's holding back

Renault may be entering 2018 with the intention of prioritising reliability over performance, but Mercedes say they are looking to extract the maximum from their engine immediately in 2018, with Lewis Hamilton looking forward to trying out the Silver Arrows' "party mode" in qualifying for the Australian Grand Prix.

Red Bull's hopes of muscling into Mercedes and Ferrari's fight at the front, as well as McLaren's chances of catching them up, rest on their Renault power units.

The French engine delivered some impressive laps during pre-season. With Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen in a league of their own for the Scuderia, Fernando Alonso and Daniel Ricciardo were the other drivers to put in lap times never before seen at the Circuit de Catalunya.

To the naked eye, Mercedes looked well off the pace in Barcelona, Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas languishing lower down the charts, but the champions' one-lap potential is yet to be unlocked.

And, having won 15 of 20 pole positions last year, Hamilton hinted that Saturday dominance could be on the cards once again for Mercedes in 2018.

"Our quali mode is the most fun mode – it should be the 'party' mode," said Hamilton.

"It is the most power and has the most juice, and it's when we hit the highest speeds."

Mercedes concentrated largely on long-run pace in Barcelona, as well as ironing out the kinks in last season's "diva", and their reliability looked top notch as they topped 1000 laps in the fortnight.

"It's more elegant, it fits better within the aerodynamic constraints of the car," Mercedes engine chief Andy Cowell told Motorsport of the new power unit.

"We'll know in Abu Dhabi if it lasts longer than the previous one – and there's been a continuous push to make sure our qualifying mode and our race modes are stronger than previous years."

Renault boss Cyril Abiteboul has suggested their engines will not run at their maximum potential in the early weeks of the campaign in an attempt to ensure teams are not forced to take penalties later in a campaign which will see teams penalised once they use four or more engine components.

However, Cowell believes that is the wrong strategy and says Mercedes will be going all out from the off.

"The most positive way of looking at the championship is you're going to produce a power unit that's capable of doing seven races and making sure that as it crosses the line at the end of the seventh race you've got good confidence," he said.

"But what you mustn't do is turn the power down. We need our qualifying mode to be better than ever before, we need our race mode to be better than ever before.

"We need the life to be strong enough that you can set the car up well on a Friday – you mustn't start cutting mileage. Our approach is to go in with that as our premise. If something happens, if a quality issue occurs, then we'll react and adapt."