Toto Wolff has warned Mercedes will not be able to secure an "easy" victory in Sunday's Malaysia GP, as they bid to clinch their third consecutive Constructors' Championship.
The Brackley team will become just the fifth team in history to clinch a hat-trick of titles so long as they are not outscored by eight points by Red Bull and 23 by Ferrari at Sepang.
Qualifying with both their cars on the front row for the ninth time in 2016, Mercedes start in the ideal position to claim the required result in Sunday's race - but remain wary of the challenges ahead in the race, 18 months on from being defeated by Ferrari at Sepang.
"A little bit more confident than in the last years," Wolff, Mercedes' motorsport chief, said on Saturday night. "We struggled in Singapore last year and we struggled in Malaysia earlier during that year.
"We sorted most of the problems in Singapore [two weeks ago] and we looked competitive today and the long runs were okay, so we are more in the game than in the past.
"I'm a still little bit sceptical but confident that we can be okay and fight for the win. But it's not going to be one of the easy victories."
While Mercedes' starts have often proved their Achilles heel this year, the prospect of a race-day challenge from Red Bull and Ferrari has been heightened by the competitive pace of the two teams during Friday practice's long runs.
Red Bull, who locked out the second row of the grid, ran particularly strongly on heavy fuel and they also go into Sunday's race with the potential strategy advantage of having newer sets of the faster soft tyres available. Whereas Hamilton and Rosberg only have used softs left, Daniel Ricciardo has one brand new set and Max Verstappen has a set with just one lap on.
"What's clear is that everybody has to use the hard [tyre] and everybody will probably start on soft. So you can play with that second tyre," said Wolff.
"The official forecast has predicted some lower track temperatures and there are various strategies which don't differ by a lot at the moment."
Ricciardo, who starts fourth, hopes Hamilton and Rosberg will not have the pace to break clear into their own race at the front.
"If they are more restricted, maybe our race pace could even be competitive with Mercedes," he said. "Let's see; I'd obviously love to target them. For now, we'll try to keep ahead of Ferrari, but if they're [Mercedes] not too far in front of us tomorrow we will try to keep closing the gap."
And team-mate Max Verstappen, who qualified as the lead RB12 for just the third time, added: "We just keep all our options open and yeah, it felt quite good balance on the soft tyres as well. Actually, on all the compounds it felt good on the long runs. It just depends a bit on the temperature and then from there on in the race we will decide what we will do."