F1: Teams fire up in Valencia

Williams, like everyone else, has had to scramble to get a car ready: some have not yet done so. Ferrari have shown their car, so have Team Lotus. But McLaren say they never intended to be ready for Valencia. Indeed, Button and Hamilton have been spending hours in the simulator in the past couple of weeks, driving not so much a computer simulation of the car as the computer design system that will, they hope, produce the car.

Over at Williams, which has the additional burden of severe budget constraints as sponsorship is increasingly difficult to find for all teams but especially so those in the mid-field, Sam Michael says that the car that ran yesterday at Valencia is a "launch spec." In short, it's basically a shakedown test and to make sure that the overall design and performance is likely to be competitive.

By the time the car arrives in Bahrain for the first race, the bodywork will look different due to what is politely termed an "aero upgrade." It's more than that: Williams is, like many teams, keeping its powder dry on some of its development and doesn't want others to see exactly what configuration it will run.

Part of this is due to the fact that the FIA fannied around for months over new rules, producing the final set in only June of last year, leaving teams just six months to put a new car together to substantially different specification.

Out go double diffusers and the F-duct, in comes KERS. And - perhaps the biggest challenge - a totally new tyre as Pirelli take over from Bridgestone as the sole supplier. Structure and compounds will be different. Some criticised Bridgestone for making the "hard" and "soft" tyres too similar for some tracks last year. Teams get no tyre choice: they get what the tyre company brings. There have been suggestions that the tyre company had the power to decide a race by its choice of compound: a soft tyre that would last the whole race, if regulations permitted, would bring negate the driver-produced advantage of smooth, conservative driving by allowing more aggressive drivers to keep their tyres for the same duration. Skittish cars, such as the Ferrari, would be helped by tyres that did not wear so much from lateral movement, for example, whereas Button's smooth driving in his tyre-friendly McLaren would mean extra laps on a softer tyre. By reducing the difference between the sets at races, Bridgestone inadvertently assisted some teams some weekends and other teams on other occasions, some think.

McLaren's Gary Paffett is delighted: "bigger differences in the compounds than we have seen before," he said after the test.

Lotus have put out the first pictures of the 2011 car. Honestly, it's dog ugly from the front. The front wing looks like the eyebrows of a mad professor. From the side, though, the lines look fairly conventional despite the regulation changes. The team is aiming for regular points finishes and with its Renault / Red Bull drive train the hardware is certainly in place. The chassis team is of unquestionable quality. The only fly in the ointment is likely to be grip and whether the team sufficiently develops the aero. But with a new wind tunnel on the way, that should be improving the situation. The car is not yet at Valencia although the trucks have been en route for several days.

The Valencia test is strange: several teams are testing their 2010 car with 2011 bits - and assessing the new tyres. That brought a surprising mix of speeds: fastest was Vettel's 2011 Red Bull; second fastest was Force India's reserve driver: Nico Hulkenberg has at last found a seat albeit a somewhat demeaning one given his performance last year.

McLaren have said that they intend to bring their new car to Valencia on Friday.

But the test programme is not a good indicator of the performance in races: it's all about data collection and analysis. All out speed is not the real question - although how the cars go around corners and handle on long straights is vital to the development of the eventual version.

One especially interesting sidelight: the official Formula One website refers to Petrov driving the new Renault: there is no mention of Lotus in the team name.