The Konami code will not win you the Driver's World Championship, however.

The longest season in Formula 1's 66-year history is now complete. Like so much else in 2016, it wasn't a fantastic year, starting badly with a ridiculous farce in place of qualifying. (That qualifying process lasted two races before it went back to the old method.) And even at the beginning of the year it was obvious that only two men—Mercedes-AMG teammates Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton—stood a chance of winning the championship.

But the season was not without some high points: watching Rosberg emerge victorious in Abu Dhabi and promptly retire was one (although I, at least, will miss him); and young phenom Max Verstappen bursting into the big time with Red Bull, rapidly polarizing opinion between those who think he's the freshest breath of air since freshness first started being measured and others who reckon he needs to spend at least a season in something like GP2 or Formula 3 before playing in the big league; seeing more of fellow Red Bull driver Daniel Ricciardo and his podium ritual of drinking champagne from a sweaty race boot, which we look forward to seeing more of in 2017. All of these (although, unsurprisingly, not the qualifying debacle) have made it into F1's rather adorable 8-bit Season Review, which is online for your viewing delight.

Changes are a-coming next year—bigger tires, even more downforce, and a return to free engine development throughout the season—so 2016 marks the end of a three-year period of rules stability that has seen Mercedes-AMG completely and utterly dominant. With Rosberg leaving the sport, there's an opening at the sharpest end of the grid, which may see some shuffling of drivers between teams; most are betting Valteri Bottas will make the move from (Mercedes-powered) Williams F1 to partner Lewis Hamilton.

But Mercedes-AMG is unlikely to find the rest of the grid such easy pickings in 2017, giving us the possibility of at least a two-team fight (between Mercedes-AMG and Red Bull Racing), with Ferrari and McLaren joining the fray if they can get their acts together. Another departure from Mercedes may be far more consequential than the New World champ deciding to call it quits from the top. It has been reported that the team's technical director, Paddy Lowe, is to move to Williams F1 next year, which could be just the thing Williams needs to get back to its old winning ways.

Other things to get used to in 2017 will be the absence of veterans Jenson Button and Felipe Massa, whose nomex shoes will be filled by young hotshots Stofel Vandoorne and Lance Stroll. Next year's calendar was recently finalized by the FIA, and the good news is that the clash with Le Mans is no more. There will be 20 races in total, starting with Australia on March 26 and ending in Abu Dhabi on November 26. Germany has joined France as a traditional F1 heartland without a grand prix race, something that seems ridiculous given that both the driver's and constructor's world championships were won by Germans this year.

We'll get our initial taste of the new-look F1 at the first winter test, which takes place between February 27 and March 2 at the Circuit de Catalunya in Spain.