F1: Williams signs Senna, says "goodbye" to Barichello

The old warhorse of Formula One won't make it into the history books as the first driver to make it to a twenty consecutive years at the pinnacle of motorsport unless he can secure one of the remaining drives with a second or third rank team for 2012.

His place at Williams has been taken by the promising youngster Bruno Senna who was released from Renault (to be Lotus) at the end of 2011.

Williams has expressed delight at putting Senna in the car. Frank Williams, the team principal, said "The circumstances of Bruno’s two seasons in Formula One have not given him an ideal opportunity to deliver consistently so it was essential that we spent as much time with him as possible to understand and evaluate him as a driver. We have done this both on track and in our simulator and he has proven quick, technically insightful and above all capable of learning and applying his learning quickly and consistently. Now we are looking forward to seeing that talent in our race car.”

Senna linked his future to his uncle, Ayrton: "“It will be very interesting to drive for a team that my uncle has driven for, particularly as quite a few of the people here actually worked with Ayrton."

He will drive alongside Pastor Maldonad.

Rubens, in the meantime, displayed his grace and the utter gentlemanliness that has characterised his time in F1, even in difficult circumstances. As the news relating to Senna was released, Rubens tweeted "twitter friends..I won't be driving the Williams car this year.I wish my friend @BSenna all the best..the future is wide open."