F1: Caterham in surprise driver announcement

A posting on Twitter by Heikki Kovalainen during the afternoon of Friday 17th February gives the game away. "Welcome to the team Petrov, look forward to work with him. I want to thank Jarno, we became good friends during these years, I wish him well," he says.

The news, in fact, was broken by the team just an hour earlier when it announced that Vitally Petrov would drive alongside the Finn.

For the past few days, Trulli has been denying rumours that he was to be replaced. And Caterham doesn't have the budget to keep three senior drivers. This newspaper questioned the inclusion of Trulli at the outset and, although he has not performed badly, nor has he performed as well as his experience would suggest he should.

Petrov was dumped by Renault (which in 2012 will race as Lotus) in favour of Bruno Senna, a decision that may have been as much driven by the concept of the name and yellow helmet in a black and gold car as by his ability. Senna is a good driver - there is no doubt about that - but Petrov (with the money he brought to Renault) was both an excellent driver and a fiscal asset.

Trulli had been defending his seat when rumours began to circulate that he may be under threat from the team's third driver, Giedo van der Garde, who also comes with a bag of cash.

When all the other teams packed up and went home after the Jerez test, Caterham stayed an extra day, making a promotional film. Trulli was part of that team and observers commented that this appeared to indicate his continued role with the team.

But a week's a long time in F1 and, as Mike Gascoyne has been booted upstairs to Chief Technical Officer of the newly formed Caterham group to oversee not just the F1 team but also the development of new road cars, things have been changing fast.

Money played a part: just as in the case of Force India - the personal sideline of drinks and airline magnate Vijay Mallya, Caterham has been primarily the personal sideline of AirAsia / Tune Group boss Tony Fernandes. But Fernandes has been splashing the cash in soccer, too and to judge by the bias in his tweets, he's displaying much more interest in that. His team Queen's Park Rangers may be just as big a money pit as Formula One. But F1 has the opportunity to raise outside sponsorship more easily: soccer players don't bring sponsorship with them.

Unlike Malya's Kingfisher Airlines, AirAsia is not in dire financial straits. But extra money is always welcome in a sport where constant development is the only way to stand still.