I expect RBR to be really strong, they were totally lost last winter and yet were on podium speed when season started. Now Renault is much more powerfull and car is even better than last year, I wouldn't be surprised to see them fighting for the win right away since melbourne.
That's why the winter is so pointless (from a fans speculation POV) because even if what you say is true, there'll probably be little signs of it by watching the tests. Yet you have people over analysing 0.1 or 0.3 second margins.
Even the teams themselves don't know where they stand when they head into Melbourne and they'll be saying as much in a few weeks time. Winter is extremely useful for the teams, but yeah..
Winter can say how solid Mercedes is, but maybe you didn't need to be a fortune teller or paddock expert in order to work that one out. Since the last race until now, IMO there have been no big surprises.
And even if Merc had super aggressive developments that were halting progress and doing small numbers of laps, it wouldn't necessarily mean that they'd struggle in Melbourne.
Feels a bit annoying to feel like I'm repeating myself but it's good to not know.. because by the last third of the season it becomes quite predictable and one of the good things about the early season is not knowing, and how dynamic and unpredictable the order can be during the first few months. There is nothing like that feeling after the first qualifying of the season, and every season there is always some surprises. There is always some embaressment from some teams based off of false hope and hype.. but also some nice stories of an underdog being higher than people expected.
As Nico said after one of the days, the colder temperatures are so unrealistic, there is a lot of guesswork and estimations involved.