I was going to do a gearing analysis as other years since we got ourselves a nice battle at the very top and there were rumors of interesting differences between 3rd and 8th gears between Mercedes and Red Bull...
Well, glad I didn't spend the time (last weeks have been busy, busy).
A nice fallout of the flexy-wing saga, is this video here:
Visual qualitative analysis:
No significant difference in 3rd gear and no significant difference in 4th gear, where the limit of traction might be.
Likewise, no significant difference in 8th gear, so there will be no top speed --> overtaking implications (not engine and gearing related at least).
There are differences in 5th, 6th and 7th.
Mercedes' 5th gear is about 300rpm shorter (more rpm for the same speed) than Red Bull's.
Mercedes' 6th gear is about 400rpm shorter (more rpm for the same speed) than Red Bull's.
Mercedes' 7th gear is about 200rpm shorter (more rpm for the same speed) than Red Bull's.
But by 5th they are essentially getting perfect traction, so all this means is that they will go through the gears at different moments, maybe the Mercedes will spend a split second less in 5th and a split second more in 7th as they accelerate. But, AFAICT, no performance implications here (which was the overall conclusion since 2016 at least).
If anybody can point to a good reason (and example?) of why other teams would be geared very differently to those two, I might look at it. But otherwise I might pass on 2021 as well.