What Red Bull is trying to hide with its RB16B launch

The extra B is not a typo; Red Bull, in naming its 2021 chariot the RB16B, has not even considered the pretence that its latest Formula 1 car is an all-new machine. The team's figures have been open about the amount of carryover from last year's car and, if you look at the form-book over the past few seasons, that might play into its favour.

Red Bull often ends a season with a much stronger turn of pace than it begins one. Everyone's favourite purveyor of caffeine-laced, acid reflux-inducing, ambiguously flavoured beverages usually concludes a season having filled F1's fans with the hope that Mercedes might finally be challenged in the next term. Then, when the new season rolls around, Red Bull gets hit by teething troubles with its new car and opens the door for Mercedes to walk to a collection of early wins. And thus, the cycle continues.

PLUS: Eight things Red Bull must do to beat Mercedes in 2021

But with a chance to actually continue its development on a car for 2021, Red Bull just might be able to arrest that cycle. This, of course, is dependent on the body of work it has produced over the off-season - and whether its development path has transcended that of Mercedes.

If you were waiting for a glut of changes to be present on the RB16B's launch model, then you will be disappointed. Everything is more or less as-was in the final Abu Dhabi round last year, barring the mandatory 2021 tweaks and a minor change to the front brake ducts.

Red Bull ran with two different nose specifications last season; a squarer design that is seen on the launch-spec car, and a rounder model that was used more sporadically across 2020. The latter shifted the front wing mountings to the underside of the nose, cleaning up the flow to the cape behind, but only saw action during the opening and final weekends of the season. Team principal Christian Horner alluded to windtunnel correlation issues that hampered Red Bull's progress, and perhaps that latter nose took time to understand as a concept.

Given its interchangeability, it would be no surprise to see further nose swaps later down the line. The RB16B also has a new floor, which looks distinctly similar to a design that Red Bull trialled in practice at Abu Dhabi. It features a fin in the rear corner which seems to take any airflow drifting outwards and send it back inwards, while there's also an array of added fins further forward.

Otherwise, the usual start-of-season game of spot-the-difference has yielded very little, other than the smattering of changes to sponsorship. Aston Martin, naturally, is off the car, and its presence on the paintwork is replaced by a greater quantity of Honda logos.

The Japanese manufacturer has progressed into yet another swansong season, and so it's managing to milk the value of sponsorship space for all its worth. Sergio Perez's smattering of sponsors - primarily from Carlos Slim's portfolio of brands - also help to fill up the car a bit. And, consequently, this feature that was supposed to be an in-depth look at all of the different things that Red Bull has done for 2021.

Back in December, Horner mentioned that 60% of the 'new' Red Bull was carried over from 2020, suggesting that there's a 40% ratio of things that are new - but, alas, these appear to be the mandatory changes and internals at this point in time. Honda has provided a new powerplant for the team to play with, which should help the RB16B find a few more klicks on the straight and a little bit more efficiency too.

The poisoned chalice of doing this particular job in 2021 is there's not a lot of new things to talk about, and the things that are new are kept under cover of darkness, lest those pesky rival teams copy it and turn up early next season with an innovation that was supposed to be one team's silver bullet

Anything else, at this stage, is anyone's guess. That's the poisoned chalice of doing this particular job in 2021 - there's not a lot of new things to talk about, and the things that are new are kept under cover of darkness, lest those pesky rival teams copy it and turn up early next season with an innovation that was supposed to be one team's silver bullet.

Perhaps that's been Red Bull's gambit all along: push last year's car out with a few minor changes for the cameras, and turn up to Bahrain with a car that is inexplicably faster than last year's A-spec model. The danger, of course, is being rumbled in pre-season testing; one can either style it out like Brawn did in 2009 and just make everyone assume the team was running low-fuel runs, or do the opposite and strap on enough sandbags to make the car resemble the Somme in 1916.

But little escapes F1's engineers. Each team makes its own mathematical models to assess the times produced throughout testing, and to work out who looks quick and who doesn't. Naturally, Autosport receives a barrage of emails and tweets each year to tell us that looking into the testing times is folly - but that doesn't stop all of the F1 teams from doing it either.

However, Red Bull is cautious and keeps its ace card close to its chest. Each media outlet trading in motorsport predictions post-testing predicts another Mercedes rout, with Red Bull just doing enough to keep hold of second in the rankings.

Then, the season opener descends on Bahrain a week later. Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez are now given permission to unleash the RB16B's secret weapon, but only in Saturday's sessions. Both are reminded to keep their powder dry during the dead-air FP1 and FP2 sessions, leaving the Mercedes duo to take the Friday glory as Horner expertly manages expectations in media sessions.

The drivers, poker-faced in the press conference and having let nothing incriminating slip from their tightly-locked mouths, turn on the taps in FP3. Red Bull, bolting on the soft tyre, runs riot. The duo locks out the front row in qualifying, despite a slight heart-in-mouth moment for Verstappen after getting baulked on his Q2 run by traffic.

There is dissent among the ranks, following Red Bull's shellacking of the field on the Saturday evening. The word "illegal" stumbles out of some of the team principals' mouths, having been left at a loss to explain the gaping chasm between them and the potency of the RB16Bs. Horner, talking to Sky Sports, remains cute with his explanations, giving nothing away - his media presence following a period of dominance remaining time-tested following the team's successes in the previous decade.

A team lodges a protest, but at nothing specific; nobody knows what Red Bull has actually brought to the party. Verstappen and Perez waltz to a 1-2 finish, lapping all but the Mercedes pair, and still remain stony-faced amid mounting pressure from journalists and pundits alike. Resolute in defence, the team gave nothing away. Red Bull's secret was its own, and even an investigation from the FIA found nothing. It seemed as though, amid the shift to the new regulations, the car was unshackled and free to make magic in the hands of its two drivers. And in that flurry of sparks under Bahrain's night sky, Red Bull cemented itself as the favourite for 2021.

Or, perhaps none of that happens.

The problem is that, when launch images give very little away, sometimes one has to use one's imagination.