F1: Testing, Twitter and poorly punctuated press releases

A sizeable chunk of the Formula One world has gathered in Valencia for the first official testing of the year. This is where the cars hit the road for the first time and the designers all sweat as we get to see if they do actually work in real life as opposed to in the wind tunnel.

Mercedes, Ferrari, McLaren, Williams, Renault, Toro Rosso and Sauber took part today. Red Bull preserves its air of mystery, as it did last year, by sitting out the early tests. It certainly didn't do them any harm in 09, that's for sure.

Virgin F1 isn't letting its car loose until Thursday and Friday of this week at Silverstone. Lotus doesn't launch its car until 12th Feb which leaves USF1, Campos and Force India are still to tell us what they're up to. Force India's last tweet suggested we'd know more round about 12 February.

Twitter has made a huge difference to we fans as we can get minute by minute accounts from teams, drivers and journalists. That nice James Allen has even sorted all the various tweets into intelligible form for us all. You can even filter them so,for example, you can only see the drivers' or the teams' tweets and cut out the commentary from the journalists.

More fantastic even than seeing Michael Schumacher back behind the wheel of an F1 car was Felipe Massa's return after that horrible crash in Hungary last July. I'm glad that he finished up on top today. The full results were:

1 Felipe Massa 1:12.574 (Ferrari)
2 Pedro de La Rosa 1:12.784 (Sauber)
3 Michael Schumacher 1:12.947 (Mercedes)
4 Nico Rosberg 1:13.543 (Mercedes)
5 Gary Paffett 1:13.846 (McLaren)
6 Rubens Barrichello 1:14.449 (Williams)
7 Sebastien Buemi 1:14.762 (Toro Rosso)
8 Robert Kubica 1:15.000 (Renault)

Mercedes GP are going to have to proof read their press releases more carefully - an apostrophe missing in the first line made me shudder. (Update: 21:45 - well, one word from me, and they change it. I'm impressed. Well, actually, I'm sure it had nothing to do with this but it's good to see such attention to detail from the team.)

However, it appears that Mr Schumacher is having fun. Actually, I'm beginning to wonder if his return is a bit of a mid life crisis:

"It felt just like at the very beginning of my career in 1991 when on the first lap, I thought ‘wow that was really fast’ and then on the second lap, I was just extremely excited. I feel like a young boy again and really enjoyed myself out there."

I just hope it feels the same for him half way through the season when he's truly back on the F1 treadmill.

I just wish Radio 5 Live had sent Ant and Crofty out there to cover the testing like they do the practice sessions.

Instead, I have to make do with German TV - but it is worth trying to kickstart my schoolgirl German to see Schumi fly again.

Seeing their reporter made me grateful for the BBC1 boys. You just don't wear a shiny suit in a pit lane, for goodness sake. Enjoy!

And Hello to Mercedes GP, Schumacher and Rosberg

First, they teased us



And then they finally gave us what we wanted - a good lopk at the car and the drivers, for the 2010 season. As the launch was taking place, people were asking on Twitter what colour the car actually was. Was it white, or silver - and nobody mentioned the lovely splash of turquoise which is ironically and spookily similar to the shade used here. I love it when there's a bit of symmetry between all of my favourite worlds. I do hope that someone is going to have a word in the video commentator's ear though and remind him within an inch of his life that the team principal's name is Ross Brawn, not Brown, nor Braun.

We don't know what the 2010 car looks like, and won't until the test in Valencia next week. Even then, that's not going to be the car that ends up on the grid in Bahrain, because there will be a further aerodynamic upgrade before then. Well, you're not going to give all your secrets away in a test 6 weeks before the start of the season, are you? What we saw today was the 2009 car with a lick of paint on it.

I think the car is absolutely gorgeous. I love the simplicity and sleekness of it. I didn't expect to like it as much as Brawn's bright and sunny car from last year, but I do.

There's symmetry for Schumacher as well, ending his career at Mercedes where it began in sports car racing. This was a highly unusual way into F1 in those days but it turned out to be a good choice by Schumacher's manager Willi Weber.

I'm wondering how the relationship between Nico Rosberg and Michael Schumacher will pan out. Nico is a talented driver who's had a good grounding at Williams. Michael Schumacher is a legend. Ross Brawn says that both drivers will have equal status. Now, he lived up to that last year, but he has so much history with Michael that it may be hard for Nico to break into their close relationship. He certainly won't have a chance of ever getting on with Ross if he behaves like a brat, like Lewis Hamilton did to Alonso when he arrived at McLaren. I watched the DVD of the 2007 season and, sure, both drivers behaved appallingly, but you'd think that there would have to be some respect shown by a rookie to a double world champion.

I think, I hope, that Nico's more grown up than that. I hope he relishes the chance to work with one of the best drivers ever. Yes, he'll try his damnedest to beat him, which is fine, but I'm sure there's a lot he can learn from Michael's long experience. Interstingly, Nico's race engineer will be Jock Clear, who was Jacques Villeneuve's race engineer at the time when Villenueve was beating Schumacher.

I'm hoping that the new Mercedes website will have special features and more scope for interaction like the Brawn one did. They seem to have taken away most of the team biographies. They did really excellent race weekend coverage last year and I hope it continues. They need to keep the fans who came to them last season.

I like the photos they've put up from today, though. There's an especially lovely one of Michael and Corinna Schumacher.

I'm really looking forward to seeing how next week's test goes. And it's only 6 weeks on Friday until the first race in Bahrain.

A final farewell to Brawn GP

As I write this the Formula 1 media circus is gathering in snowy Stuttgart for the launch of Mercedes GP Petronas, the team that will hopefully propel Michael Schumacher to his 8th world championship, not that I'm in any way biased or anything.

This is the new incarnation of the Brawn GP team which was in turn rose from the ashes of the Honda GP team, rescued by team principal and F1 legend. He never really wanted to own an F1 team - he's a strategy guy - so it's no surprise that he would sell the team to a larger company who could put it on a more secure finacial footing and protect the jobs of its 450 employees.

Over the last few days it's been quite sad to see the official Brawn GP website and Facebook and Twitter pages take on the black and silver of Mercedes rather than the yellow/green, black and white of Brawn. Hopefully we'll see more on the website today than a recorded message from Nico Rosberg. I'm kind of glad he's getting a look in. When the Twittar account changed to OfficialMGP, I'm sure I wasn't alone in thinking the M stood for Michael.

You can't really say that it's the end of an era for a team that was only in existence for 10 months, but Brawn GP gave us a really special season that united F1 fans in admiration. Who would have thought that a team that didn't exist a month before the start of the season could win both championships? Their spirit, effort and teamwork paid off in unprecedented and spectacular style.

The good news is that the heart of that team will still be beating in Mercedes GP Petronas. Ross Brawn remains at the helm and everything will be done his way. The colours may be more sleek steel than Summer cocktail but there's every reason to believe that the Brackley team can do just as well this year.