F1 | Everything must change for everything to remain as before: will Mercedes still be the master?

How vainly he tries to warm up in the cold winter of a Formula 1 leopardiana, which revolutionizes and changes shape to remain unchanged and immobile in its substance. It's a circus that is a carousel, a roller coaster of announcements, games social, fun jokes between friendly teams - see the Mercedes puzzle to create some interest in the highly announced hiring of Valtteri Bottas - but it is also a succession of veiled poisons, low blows in the form of registered mail with return receipt, for a All new technical regulations that must be carefully read and interpreted.

There are those like Red Bull, for example, who ended up in the "labyrinth" of Goose Game, having to go back a few boxes and then start again, reviewing some plans - or rather mulling over some solutions in the area of ​​suspensions that were all too risky - and seeing his predicted climb to the top dampened at the best of times Urbi et orbi. There are those who dream and hope to overturn everything, starting almost from scratch, like the noble and hopeful McLaren-Honda. Then there is Ferrari which informs itself, intervenes, dialogues. Guarded and prudent, conservative in ideas, but painstaking in work, with the fear of making mistakes which is then the fear of taking risks, and so let's expect a "668" which will not be a thunderbolt of war, but at least a good basis on which to work, a docile car, less drastic than the intractable and indecipherable SF16-H.

The aerodynamic revolution will (finally) give us more beautiful, aggressive single-seaters, with nice pot-bellied dinghies in the style of the seventies and eighties, but also the well-founded fear of races with less overtaking, because you go and find a space between stellar cornering and braking even more exasperated. Long live the grip, long live the performance they will say, but boredom is lurking, and it could once again be silver in color.

With a Ferrari that is a pure unknown and in constant internal restructuring, snubbed by predictions and with few expectations (but we always sympathize with the underdog), iThe role of Mercedes' great challenger falls to the fearsome Red Bull of the diabolical Adrian Newey. Who better than him can wallow and gloat with a 30% increase in downforce? Yet between the Federation's clarifications and bans on hydraulic suspensions and a Renault engine with a completely revised architecture, Red Bull itself will need time to fuel up, as admitted by Mateschitz himself who spoke of "half the season to have a car capable of troubling Mercedes."

Yes, the orphaned Mercedes of Nico Rosberg and Paddy Lowe. But even losing world champion and technical director in one fell swoop (with Allison ready to take over) Brackley remains one step ahead. With a team of technicians that would make NASA envious and its two beautiful factories, the Anglo-German team is a power that does not seem to crumble under the (for now will-o'-the-wisp) enemy fire. And with a Bottas who will still have to metabolise the transition to a universe of pressure such as Mercedes, Lewis Hamilton seems to be able to play the part of the cannibal again. It's still early, but putting together some clues we shouldn't be too surprised if Ricciardo and Verstappen's dreams of glory will remain such for a while, and if Mercedes will start 2017 like the last three seasons of the hybrid era: by winning hands down. With Lewis downhill towards new triumphs. The risk is to be enchanted by this new Formula 1, only to then realize that perhaps it is the same as always. Very silvery, if not grey. A question of nuances.

Antonino Rendina

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