Bruno Senna joins Williams!

In a move that I certainly didn't see coming, Williams have revealed that Bruno Senna will be in the second car alongside Pastor Maldonaldo for 2012.

His appointment came after lengthy driver evaluations of a few drivers on Williams Shortlist, Adrian Sutil was amongst them, and I would have certainly had my money on him getting the drive. What no doubt counted against him was the fact that he now has to go to court to face an assault charge for an incident after the Malaysian Gp I believe.

Senna has financial backing, which to Williams these days, is on a par with driving talent it seems. Bruno seems like a nice guy and I would rather see him in the car than almost anyone else.

What is certain this season though is that he has to perform, his first season in a woeful HRT doesn't really count, and last year he only got the Renault drive late in the year so it was difficult to judge his progress.

If he can getting in the car and beat the pants off Maldonaldo, then his future in F1 should be assured. Let's not forget that Pastor often matched and beat Rubens last year, no mean feat, so Bruno has his work cut out.

After losing out at Lotus Renault, this is the best seat he could have possibly dreamed about. Williams are back with Renault power this year, a combination that dominated F1 in the early to mid 90's. They have a depth of experience and knowledge, I really hope that they can make a serious comeback this year.

It would be remiss of me not to point out the significance of a Senna in a Williams again, a day I am sure Sir Frank and Patrick Head never thought they would see in their lifetimes. The omens are there for the past to be put right, so please F1 gods, give Williams the equivalent of the 2009 Brawn for 2012.

Have Lotus Renault stolen a march with innovative ride height management system

Lotus Renault have been testing a new system that allows the car to control the ride height under braking.

It is from what I understand, linked to the braking system, so it is applied as the driver applies the brakes, limiting the front wing dive as the car brakes. This would allow the team to run a lower ride height, as with this new system, the front of the car's ride height can be managed. 

The next step of course is whether it is deemed legal, as devices controlled by the driver are now banned, after the F-duct episode in 2010.

If it is allowed it could give Lotus Renault a nice little jump over the other teams. It might also give a little boost to a certain Finn who has just joined the team :-)

Alonso splits from wife, bad news for other F1 drivers I reckon

Fernando Alonso announced that he is splitting from his wife Raquel del Rosario, a Spanish pop star. The couple were married in 2006 and made a joint statement announcing their seperation.

How will this affect the double world champ in 2012?

If anything I can imagine this will make him only stronger. Fernando was never one to have huge entourages in the team garage at race weekends, and quite honestly if I had not read this story I would not have even known he was having personal problems. He is someone that arrives at a race weekend fully committed and professional at all times.

If you contrast him with Lewis Hamilton, who was sulking publicly when he had split with his on/off again girlfriend Nicole Scherzinger. You can see how different characters they are.

If Fernando was committed before, I can only imagine him being even stronger in 2012 now that he has put his personal problems behind him.

In fact, I would not even put it past him to have dumped his wife coz he thought she was slowing him down...... :-)

Torro Rosso and Force India announce their drivers

Blocking your ears won't help keep out the bad news boys

Its not going to be a merry Christmas for Jaime Alguersari and Sebastian Buemi as they have both been released by Torro Rosso in favour of Daniel Ricciardo and Jean Eric Vergne.

This is a very drastic move in my opinion as starting a season with 2 new drivers can only slow you down. How do you measure the improvements in the car versus last year, how do you measure how the new driver is doing versus an established benchmark. With 2 new drivers I think they might even fall back behind the midfield teams they beat this year.

Ricciardo and Vergne

What does come out of this for me, is that Red Bull did not see either Buemi or Alguersari as good enough to take over from Webber in 2013. That is what has seemingly triggered the rather drastic step of dropping both drivers from this year. Sink or swim, Vergne and Ricciardo have been warned. Ricciardo has spent the latter half of 2011 at HRT, so there will be more pressure on him to be a team leader as opposed to Vergne who is a complete F1 newbie.

In other more obvious news, Force India have announced that their 2012 drivers will be Di Resta and Hulkenberg leaving Sutil out in the cold. Its a tough blow for Sutil as in my opinion he outperformed Di Resta solidly in the second half of the season. In his case however he does seem more likely to find a drive as he does possess the speed and has shown as much on many occasions.

Many people were surprised when Williams dropped Hulkenberg at the end of 2010 for pay driver Pastor Maldonaldo. He showed a lot of promise then and it will be an interesting battle between him and Di Resta. Hulkenberg did some Friday running with Force India this past season as their 3rd driver so he is familiar with the team so it won't be all new to him. It was also vital as he got to experience Pirelli tyres, something that Vergne for example won't have extensive experience with as compared to Ricciardo

Kimi gives Lotus a fright!

Kimi shows that he can stay on a snowmobile too

Kimi Raikkonen gave his new team, and Eric Boullier in particular, a big scare over the weekend.

Kimi was taking part in a snowmobile race in Austria when he fell off and hurt his wrist. Luckily it is nothing more severe than a sore wrist, but given what happened to Lotus Renault last year with Kubica, Boullier must have held his breath when he heard Kimi had been injured.

I honestly think F1 should bring back F1 testing just to keep drivers out of trouble when they not racing!

Petrov out and Grosjean in at Lotus for 2012

Lotus have announced that Romain Grosjean will line up alongside Kimi Raikkonen in 2012.

This ends all the speculation about who the second driver was going to be. I was pretty confident that Petrov was going to retain his seat despite his tirade against the team in the Russian media a few weeks back, for which he duly apologized. He still has some considerable financial backing so I really thought that would keep him in the team.

Bruno Senna was on the way out anyway, and with Kubica seemingly unable to make the start to the season, Lotus have taken steps to finalize their lineup early.

I haven't seen anywere as to how long Grosjeans deal with Lotus is for, but one would assume that if he underperforms next season he won't retain the seat for 2013.

He did make his F1 debut some time ago in 2009 when the team was still Renault, but he was replaced by Petrov in 2010. He then went away and worked hard and became GP2 champion last year and fought his way back into the team.

There are whispers that Lotus sponsor Total had a big part to play in Grosjean getting the drive as they wanted a French driver in the team.

Either way, I will be interested to see how he goes compared to Raikkonen. The slightly concerning thing for Lotus is that they will have drivers new to Pirelli tyres and we will see if that hampers them early season until they get up to speed.

Vettel's standup routine at the 2011 Autosport Awards

I think Seb is an exceptionally funny guy, he always comes across as a genuine and very likeable person in interviews, and his appearance on Top Gear was pretty hilarious too.

This is him at the Autosport awards, and it almost runs like some kind of stand up skit.

His Kimi Raikkonen impression is pretty good!