The 2010 Formula 1 season is only just beginning, but Vodafone McLaren Mercedes driver Jenson Button already has plenty to celebrate after picking up a Laureus World Sports Award in Abu Dhabi last night. Jenson joined the ranks of legendary sports stars such as Lance Armstrong, Usain Bolt, Roger Federer and Mika Häkkinen in an emotional ceremony at the Emirates Palace.

Ross Brawn believes the new Mercedes will be competitive at the start of the Formula 1 season, but has admitted that the team does not enjoy the advantage it held at the start of 2009, as Brawn GP.
Seven-time world champion Michael Schumacher hinted yesterday that the W01 was more competitive than he initially thought. Team boss Brawn agrees the car is good, but believes it is currently not the best.

Lewis Hamilton delivered the perfect evidence of the step forward McLaren has made at Barcelona as he set the quickest time of the week on an exciting final morning of pre-season testing on Sunday.
With the leading teams all spending their morning running through some low-fuel qualifying simulations, it offered a proper glimpse of the current competitive order – and it was Hamilton who eventually emerged on top shortly before the lunch break.

Jenson Button is confident of McLaren’s potential to fight for victory in Bahrain having declared himself happy with the MP4-25’s aero update on his final day of testing prior to the season opener.
Though the world champion ended the third day of the Barcelona test third fastest, 0.7s away from Nico Rosberg’s ultimate pace, he was delighted by his McLaren’s long-run pace in a full race simulation despite tricky weather conditions.

Nico Rosberg reckons Mercedes now just has to fine-tune its set-up and it will be ready to make a competitive start to the 2010 season.
The German was fastest in today’s Barcelona test, and ended the day extremely upbeat about his car.
“I think in general there’s no absolute weakness with the car at the moment,” said Rosberg.

Nico Rosberg finished the third day of testing at Barcelona with the fastest time for Mercedes GP.
The German’s best lap of 1m20.686s from the morning, set before rain disrupted the action for a couple of hours, was enough to keep him at the top of the timesheets ahead of Sebastien Buemi’s Toro Rosso.

The significant reductions Formula 1 teams have self-imposed on testing have made little difference to the development of the cars, and were a principal factor in convincing Michael Schumacher to return to the sport, according to the seven-time world champion.
The teams introduced a ban on in-season testing at the beginning of last year and agreed to a combined four-test pre-season schedule in 2010 in order to further reduce costs.

Michael Schumacher has changed his stance on Mercedes GP’s competitiveness heading into the beginning of the 2010 season.
Schumacher said on Friday that he did not expect the team to be in a position to win races early in the year, but changed his mind on Saturday after analysing the data in more detail.

Nico Rosberg topped the timesheets on Saturday morning as rain disrupted the penultimate day of this week’s Formula 1 test at Barcelona in Spain.
Although the day started off dry, and Rosberg was able to complete a series of low fuel short runs to set a best time of 1m20.686s on his final effort, everyone’s programme at Barcelona was hit as rain soaked the track shortly before 11am.

McLaren driver Jenson Button has predicted that the upcoming 2010 Formula One world championship will be one of the best seasons we have seen in a very long time with many drivers in contention for the world crown including himself and teammate Lewis Hamilton.
“We will see the most exciting championship in the history of F1.

Force India has announced that its technical director James Key has left the team. Design director Mark Smith will be promoted to replace him.
Key has been with the team since its Jordan days, initially joining as a data engineer in 1998. He progressed through the ranks to become technical director by 2005.
“I have spent the majority of my motor racing career within the team and although a difficult decision I felt the time was right for me to move on to new opportunities,” Key …

For the second test in a row, McLaren came out on top on combined times at the end of this week’s Jerez action.
This time it was Jenson Button who led the led the way, his 1m18.871s from this morning proving 0.7 seconds quicker than the time his team-mate Lewis Hamilton set to top the previous week’s table.

Paul di Resta has declared himself pleased with his half-day at the wheel of Force India’s VJM-03 at Jerez today, despite the test being affected by constantly-changing weather.
Di Resta, who will serve as a Friday test driver with the team at most of the races during 2010, spent the morning in the car before handing it over to Adrian Sutil early in the afternoon.

Even though it was his teammate at the time, Giancarlo Fisichella, that almost secured his Force India team’s maiden victory at the Spa Francorchamps circuit in Belgium last year, it is thought that Adrian Sutil may well use this year’s Mercedes powered contender to finally stand on the top step of the rostrum.