F1 | Debuts, confirmations and the hope of some surprises: it will not be a banal Bahrain GP

There are now a few days left and the curtain will finally open in Bahrain where, on the Sakhir track, the new Formula One season will officially begin. It seems like a championship with an already written outcome, and the script should be widely respected thanks to the almost unchanged regulation which does not reveal any major upheavals among the forces on the track, and yet that of Manama is an appointment which - as has happened in the past with other inaugural events - will almost certainly reserve some points of interest.

One of the discussion points that has peppered these weeks of waiting is that concerning Mercedes. In the pre-season tests the Brackley team seemed vulnerable, especially with Lewis Hamilton's car, but certainly in these days of work they have found the main way to get back on track. In fact, woe to think of a W12 as a dead giveaway compared to the competition. It would be like committing an injustice to our intelligence.

Yet the tests provided us with important signals regarding Red Bull and McLaren, which seemed to be the most ready teams in this very first phase. Surely, if Mercedes really proves to be "human" in this first round of the season, Milton Keynes will have to take advantage of it. On the other hand, it has the best pair of drivers on the market and thinking of being able to regularly get behind at least one Mercedes (that of Bottas) should not be too difficult an exercise for the Verstappen-Perez duo.

In the top teams there will be, like this year, a series of important debuts. Sergio Perez, Daniel Ricciardo, Carlos Sainz, Sebastian Vettel and Fernando Alonso. Not pizza and figs! It will be interesting to understand to what point each of them has reached the level of knowledge of the new vehicle, especially for Vettel who in the day and a half of testing on his AMR21 had to miss several hours due to various technical problems. But above all they will reveal the cards to us and we will finally understand how much of a gap Ferrari, on a real track and with an engine, has made up over the competition given that in the tests the Ferrari remained "buttoned up" dedicating itself exclusively to mileage and reliability.

Among the absolute debuts are those of the rookies who, compared to the past, will have a lot of attention. If the challenge between Mick Schumi jr and Nikita Mazepin risks being a "poor man's derby" which will be staged deep behind the lines, given the technical inadequacy of Haas which decided not to develop the 2021 single-seater, dedicating itself completely to next year's, there is a lot of anticipation to see Yuki Tsunoda at work who did very well in the tests. In fact, the Japanese, who immediately seemed at ease with the AlphaTauri, could prove (in the long run) to be an uncomfortable companion for Pierre Gasly.

The ingredients for seeing a non-soporific Bahrain GP are all there. All that remains is to wait for the traffic lights to go out.