F1 | Red Bull and its fairytale world

Sooner or later we will have to understand if Red Bull really believes what it says or is aware of living in its own world. For the second consecutive winter in Milton Keynes they give the idea of ​​playing and singing it alone, with Horner and Marko winking at each other and elbowing each other as a sign of complicity after having made yet another winning proclamation.

Because it is a fact that Red Bull perseveres in this F1 narrative of its own, distorted, where it loves to paint itself as a contender for the title, a perennial candidate for an Oscar that never wins, speaking as a team that has in fact already closed the gap with Mercedes. The men in blue encourage themselves, strictly with bowls still, indulging in empty proclamations that are punctually disregarded in the first match.

Red Bull is spending itself like a squadron ready to win the world championship, regardless of the fact that on balance it no longer has an official supplier for the engine and above all that 2021 will be an extension of 2020 or a little more. When it is impossible for Mercedes to stop suddenly with a largely frozen regulation and with a sidereal advantage over the competition.

It's true that Verstappen was the third wheel in 2020 and was the only one who managed to lead on the Black Arrows' pace. But it is also true that he has always kept himself at a safe distance, he has never worried Hamilton from a world championship perspective, he has won two GPs but in a somewhat impromptu manner.

Above all, the victory in Abu Dhabi was passed off as what it is not; overestimating Red Bull's performance and underestimating the fact that Mercedes, for reliability reasons, ran with the handbrake on. And even though they were weakened, the two Arrows followed the Red Bull.

The gap in the standings, in qualifying, in race pace, if analyzed over the long term, remains at times unbridgeable. And it's almost endearing to hear the managers of the Anglo-Austrian team puff out their chests thinking of mending a gap that could even widen (how many times has this happened?).

The hiring of Checo Perez will certainly not be enough to win the world championship, with the rhetoric of two against one which is already tiring. For the simple reason that Bottas is less of a badass than you might think and in any case almost always places himself on the front row in qualifying. The Mexican is a strong driver, but thinking that his points could make Red Bull competitive in the Constructors' Championship, against the excessive power of Mercedes, is a hypothesis that makes you smile.

We really don't understand how Red Bull manages to persevere in the mistake of overestimating itself and giving itself a role that it evidently doesn't have. In recent years it has not even been remotely in contention for the world championship, unlike Ferrari, currently derelict and in crisis, but truly capable of frightening Mercedes in 2017 and 2018.

Red Bull, except for a few days of grace useful to remind us that Max Verstappen is a great driver, has never really worried the Brackley squadron. And he won't do it in 2021 either, even if he continues to talk about himself as a superpower ready for the Normandy landings. To then promptly deflate after two races, until Max's classic Pyrrhic victory in the middle of the season so that "siamo ready to win the world championship“, always the following year though.

Antonino Rendina

Follow @antorendina