Former Mercedes team principal Ross Brawn is confident his old team will continue to be competitive under Formula One's new regulations next year.
Brawn laid the foundations for Mercedes' success over the last three years, but left the team at the end of 2013 just before its run of three consecutive championships began. Next year's new aerodynamic regulations threaten to put an end to Mercedes' recent dominance, but Brawn believes the team should be the best prepared on the grid for the new rules.
"Mercedes will have been pulling resource off this year's programme onto next year very early, once they saw where they were with the car," he told the FIA's Auto magazine. "If I was there, and I'm sure they've carried on a similar philosophy, I'd be saying, 'Right, we've got a strong car, we can only beat ourselves, let's get everyone onto next year's programme'.
"I don't know how many other teams could do that. Success breeds success. Mercedes will be strong next year, despite the greater emphasis on chassis."
Brawn said Mercedes current dominance had its roots in a meeting with the Daimler board in 2011 when the parent company agreed to increase its investment in the team.
"Mercedes' 2014 success was actually born at the end of 2011, 2012 when we had a tough meeting with the board," he said. "They were either going to stop or they were going to step up, because 2010 and '11 weren't good enough. We had been following the resource restriction philosophy, which was collapsing. We were 450 people and we were fighting teams that were 500 or 600 people, and there's no solution to that.
"We said to the board: 'Either we step up or we ought to step back because we're in between at the moment.' The board, all credit to them, said: 'OK, we'll step up. We'll give it a go. What do you need?'
"So it was then that we put the project teams together for 2014. We hired Aldo Costa. We hired Geoff Willis. We hired the people we needed and it started to come together. That's the strategic planning you need. You've got to have a vision of where you want to be in six, 12 months, a year, two years."
Brawn says next year's regulations will shift the emphasis away from the power units and back towards the chassis, but believes engine performance should still be differentiator in Formula One.
"I've not been involved in the process to generate these regulations. When you are involved you know them intimately. I've read this set broadly and they're a big step in a certain direction. Outwardly they should make the cars a lot quicker. They'll look racy, with wider track, wider tyres, and the way the wings are profiled the cars are going to look pretty exciting.
"It will be fascinating, though, as it's putting the emphasis back on the chassis. There is a view that it was too much towards the engine, but actually I think it brought some balance. We went through a phase where the influence of the engine was almost neutral because everything was frozen and they were almost just a bracket between the gearbox and the chassis, whereas now people talk about the engines."