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.

Felipe Massa is happy with Ferrari’s preparation for the 2010 Formula 1 season, but does not believe it heads for Bahrain with any advantage over its rivals.
The 28-year-old Brazilian, who spent much of the final Barcelona test day running with a heavy fuel load, finished third quickest today.

The Stefan Grand Prix team is still hopeful the FIA will allow the Serbian squad to race in Formula 1 this year.
In a press release issued on Sunday, the team said it wanted to reconfirm its ability to race in the 2010 season, despite not yet having an entry.

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.

Rubens Barrichello is optimistic that his Williams team will prove to be one of the surprises of the year after encouraging times in recent tests.
Williams has spent much of the winter doing long runs and proving its reliability, but Nico Hulkenberg was quickest on Friday at Barcelona – and Barrichello thinks that performance has changed perceptions of their team.

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.

Jacques Villeneuve is set to have a seat fitting in Stefan GP’s car in Cologne on Monday, infomotosport has learned.
Team boss Zoran Stefanovic has said that the 1997 world champion is close to a deal with the Serbian squad, which continues to push for a place in the 2010 Formula 1 field.

Jarno Trulli is not expecting Lotus to be able to fight with any of the established Formula 1 teams in the first four races of the season.
The Italian had his final day of pre-season testing in the T127 at Barcelona today, where his best time was 4.3 seconds down on the pace set by Nico Rosberg.

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.