There was a lot of change over the F1 off-season. New tires, rear wings, aero regulations, more power for the stewards and of course politics by the truckload. However last night all that mattered for nothing and the cars ran in anger for the first time.

Discovery-one, not much changed. Sebastian Vettel and Red Bull is the class of the field. If his maturity can match the speed of the car then he looks like he will be hard to beat. Not only did he win, he won in style. Vettel took pole by a huge margin, led from green light to checker flag.

Discovery-two, the new regs made a difference. The Drag Reduction System (RDS, or the “flappy rear wing”) is interesting and seemed to allow cars to have a decent run at each other under braking. The purist in me has issues with this, I think you need to earn the place and this aids the overtaking driver. However, in reality, it was awfully fun to watch cars overtake each other.

Hamilton had a great race; he had some undertray problems at the end, but was quick enough to hold a relatively untroubled second place. After the really poor showing in testing over the last 6 weeks McLaren have put in a huge amount of work, simplified a few things and found a lot of time.

Clearly this weekend Vettel was the class of the field.

Third place and maybe the best performance of the weekend was Vitaly Petrov in the very, very sexy looking Lotus-Renault.  Kept away from the drama and stayed in front of Alonso’s Ferrari.

Ferrari looked to be close to Red Bull in testing and have to come away from the weekend disappointed with their performance with Massa unable to do better than eighth. However it was nothing compared to Mercedes race, Schumacher could not even make the final qualifying session and was out qualified by Rosberg. Neither car finished, Schumacher got a puncture early on and eventually retired, while Barrichello’s Williams took out Nico Rosberg.

Another team that looked good on the track was Sauber. New driver Sergio Perez made it a one-stop race, the only driver to do so. The tactic paid off when he finished seventh, one place in front of Japanese driver Kobayashi. Unfortunately the Saubers were later disqualified for technical infringements over the wings.

Lots of overtaking, clearly Vettel was the class of the field, and by some margin too. The circus arrives in Malaysia in a couple of weeks, a very different style of track. Some teams obviously have catching up to do; it’s going to be a busy two weeks for the teams.

The F1 silly season seems to be over earlier and earlier every year, seats are sorted and out of work drivers need to find somewhere else to race. Over the weekend one of the mid-field drivers was involved in a rally accident and unfortunately a seat at Lotus-Renault is available.

The casual fan may have heard of Robert Kubica, Over the last couple of years with Renault he has made many people take a little notice of his speed. Despite his relative anonymity when compares to Lewis Hamilton and Seb Vettel he’s thought of one as one of the faster drivers out there. A few months ago I said “Kubica has shown he belongs at the sharp end of the grid with some great drives in mid-table machinery”.

He got his break in 2006 when Jacques Villeneuve left Sauber and Kubica stepped in. He turned out to be substantially quicker than the former world Champion, being a lot cheaper probably helped him stick with Sauber too.

Despite being new at this level he was far quicker than his teammate, the experienced and highly regarded Nick Heidfeld. He finished on the podium in only his third GP. It’s wrong to say that he’s been “discovered” over the last couple of years, since that first half-season with Sauber he’s been touted as a future world champions, with the huge caveat – if only he could get the right equipment.

He often beat Lewis Hamilton when they were both racing carts. Hamilton has consistently been very complementary about Kubica and once called him a future World Champion.

In the sport there are dozens of drivers that were good enough to have been world champion,  except they were missing the right car/engine/team/luck and so on. There are lots of little indicators that indicate someone might be a little special, and most of them are present for Kubica.

Top three qualifying performances at the three best drivers circuits last year (Spa, Monaco and Suzuka) show that maybe the machinery was slower than he was. His reputation is as a fast driver, I found a quote from the technical director of Renault (or Lotus-Renault now) “You know that if the car is not running at the front, it’s because of the car, not him.”

A lot of speculation surrounds who is going to replace him at Lotus-Renault. Indications are he will be out for the year, F1 drivers are motivated men and history says he could be back sooner than that. The reserve drivers are Bruno Senna and Roman Grosjean, both would see out of their depth in the car, especially with Petrov only in his second year of racing.

Nico Hulkenberg seems the obvious candidate to me, he is Force India’s reserve driver, but I imagine they could find a way to get him in the car. He had an impressive year with Williams and I believe he only lost the drive because he could not match the millions brought in by Pastor Maldonado.

Pedro De La Rosa seems another solid choice, he’s been testing for Pirelli for the last year and has plenty of miles under his belt as a driver and test driver for teams like McLaren. Plus he’s probably got more miles on the new tyres than every other driver combined.

Who else is there? There are plenty of experienced hands out there. Nick Heidfeld seems to be the most often mentioned, Italian Vitantonio Liuzzi had some good moments for Force India last year and is without a drive. Kimi Raikkonen, Christian Klein, Jacques Villeneuve and (this has to be a joke answer) Piquet Jr have all been linked to the drive somewhere on the rumour friendly internet.

A massive blow to Kubica, a huge loss for Lotus-Renault, here is hoping he will be back with his old speed sooner rather than later. However, I bet Renault will not let him go rallying again any time soon.

It’s only day one of the first test of the year and really means nothing, but Vettel is top of the timesheets in the new Red Bull and by a little distance. Force India had a good showing, Ferrari were not much off the pace (but was reliable, Alonso did 98 laps today, but Ferraris Twitter feed is so boring) and Mercedes had issues and were a little off the pace.

To be clear, the times from Valencia are pretty meaningless, but there was some interesting stuff on show today. First day of pre-season testing is typically interesting, there was always something new to look at, drivers getting back into the groove and the glorious sound of more than one car running at any time.

When there were fewer rules on testing the bigger teams would test throughout the winter. There were plenty of freezing winter mornings in Silverstone, warmer winter days in Barcelona and shorts and the occasional t-shirt weather in Kyalami. But almost always there would only be one or two cars at a time on track, this would change at the first “official” test where there would be a handful of cars out at anyone time and it sounded absolutely glorious. While mechanics rarely enjoy testing, the noise did let us know the season was getting closer.

Other than the massive surprise that Vettel and the new Red Bull were quick, what else did we learn?

Ferrari are a little down, with Alonso behind the two Force India cars. I’m a big fan of Hulkenberg and his times were not only quicker than Alonso, but also very consistent. Last year I thought Force India may have a good year and net a few podiums, it’s way too early to say, but perhaps it will be this year?

The new Mercedes was unveiled today and from the pictures looks very sexy. While racing has disproven the “if it looks right it is right” saying more than once, it did look very nice. Niko Rosberg said the cars is a huge advance from last year, again the noises being made by the drivers are exactly what you’d expect.

The tech story of last year was McLarens F-duct that was used to stall the wing at high speed, very innovative and by the time mid season had rolled around the principals were worked out and copied by everyone else on the grid.

This year it seems Renault/Lotus has the first of the tech stories. I have to say the Renault looks spectacular in its black and gold. Last year a lot of teams were using their exhausts to make the diffusers more effective by directing the exhaust gasses under the car. Now this is banned and Renault now route the exhausts forward and vents it under the car. I think this must increase the downforce created by the floor/diffuser by accelerating the air traveling under the car and according the Bernoulli this would increase down force. First thought is the downside is the hot exhausts are now forward and next to the driver and could produce cooling issues with the exhaust gasses being pulled through the sidepod.

I wonder how many computers and wind tunnels are running hurriedly cobbled together simulations tonight to work out exactly what Renault are up to. It will be fascinating to see if this is the new must-have like last years F-ducts.

McLaren have yet to release the new car, they will be running it in a couple of weeks at Barcelona. That test will give a better comparison between the top teams and perhaps the times will be worth looking at.

Lotus is an old and storied name in F1, it’s history at the top level goes back to 1958, they raced out of Kettering Hall untill insolvency caught up with them at the end of 1994. During that final season they went through a series of pay drivers partnering Johnny Herbert for most of the year and for the first time in 36 years failed to score a single point during the season.

It was sad to see such a famous name missing from the pitlane when 1995 opened. In ’92 and ’93 Team Lotus used Cosworth engines. The company sent most of the customer engine team to enjoy a couple of late nights in Norfolk getting cars ready. It was all very rushed and last minute, in the pre-season there is never enough time and 1992 was no different.

The first time the Cosworth powered Lotus-102D turned a wheel was at Snetterton with Johnny Herbert driving. It was just a quick shakedown on a very cold morning in Norfolk, we were just swimming in the glamour of F1!

Note: at some time before Kyalami we did run a car on the test track at the Lotus cars factory at Hethel. I think it was with the second car (Mika Hakkinen) the following day, but it could have been the day before we ran at Snetteron to do a systems check.

Anyway, after his first couple of laps Johnny Herbert returned to the garage, opened his visor, looked at the gaggle of Cosworth guys and said “It’s OK, but could we put the Juddies [Judd Engines from the previous year] back in?”

And 10 days later Johnny Herbert took the same car to 6th place in the opening race of the year at Kyalami in South Africa.

Fast forward to today and we are in the heart of the 2010/11 silly season. Todays’ big announcement was there will be two “Lotus” teams entered next year after Lotus Cars purchased a part of what was once the Renault GP team. This will be called “Lotus-Renault” and unveiled a really pretty and very retro black and gold car today.

Last year the Mike Gascoine led “Lotus Racing” joined the grid, they had a decent year and were clearly the best of three new teams. Never scored any points, but were constantly ahead of Virgin and HRT (rarely has a team had a worse name).

So we have “Lotus Renault” and “Lotus Racing”… And neither team is related to the other. To further the confusion both teams are looking to run some form of black/gold livery.

It now gets a little more complex. The original GP team from 1958 to ’94 was known as “Team Lotus”, the label was owned by David Hunt (F1 champions Jame’s brother) after the original GP team went out of business.

And one more thing, both are Malaysian owned.

He finally sold the rights to the name a few months ago to the owner of what was called “Lotus Racing” (the Mike Gascoine led new team for last year).

So next year we will have two teams called Lotus, with cars that are planned to have similar colour schemes on the grid next year… Oh yeah, that’s not going to confuse people. Should all this come to fruition it’s the commentators and journalists I feel sorry for. On Speed TV in the US Bob Varsha had trouble spotting Red Bull from Toro Rosso at times last year, and they ran different colours.

It’s good to see Lotus cars back in F1, the Lotus-Renault partnership has some history with Ayrton Senna getting his first ever wins in one.

This was maybe the most exciting drivers title chase in a long time, certainly since Senna and Prost traded wins in the late 80’s.

Vettel did what he had to do today in Abu Dhabi. He went out, dominated the race and took care of everything he could control. His drive today was fitting a world champion and it would be difficult to argue that he did not deserve it.

Vettel and Red Bull have been the fastest combination on the grid all year, over a single lap there have not been many that have been able to stay with him. However a mix of driver errors, a few mechanical problems and a significant amount of bad luck had meant that the first time Vettel led the drivers’ championship was this afternoon after the race.

The start, as always, was crucial and Red Bull led from pole, and the first lap finished Vettel-Hamilton-Button-Alonso.

For Vettel to win he needed Alonso and Webber to have issues, and they did. Webber never got past his poor qualifying performance, compounded by poor race strategy and coming in for fresh rubber too early. Alonso made the same error in pitting too early and being forced to try and battle his way through the field. It was a huge error by Ferrari. The team forgot the first rule of race strategy, track position is everything.

Once Vettel had come in for his stop on lap 24 and got out ahead of Hamilton it was just a matter of the car being reliable and staying out of trouble.

Prior to Bahrain this is what I had to say.

“Based on testing times it looks a little like the F1 world has returned to business as usual with McLaren and Ferrari a little ahead of the rest. The rest are led by Red Bull and Mercedes, with Sauber, Williams and Force India looking very competitive.”

“As I’ve said, this could be a fascinating year with four world champions, really quick drivers like Vettel and Weber who want to join that club, and potentially 6 or 7 teams capable of competing at the sharp end.”

The 6 or 7 teams competing at the sharp end part was a little optimistic, Sauber certainly flattered to deceive, but I think a lot of that was down to budget. Force India had some good races, but like Sauber never developed through the season.

Overall I’m rather pleased with the accuracy of my thoughts from 9 months ago. It’s been a great season and I’ve been lucky enough to make it to a GP. There will be more next year, that I’m sure of. With five world champions in the top three teams, plus Schumacher if Mercedes is able to their shit together for next year could make it another great year.

It was the first time four drivers had ever gone into the final race all with good shout of the title. The fifth, Button, was only eliminated last week in Brazil.

What has made this year so compelling was very basic. A number of superb drivers in cars that were evenly matched. Looking forward to 2011 the same five drivers are contracted to be with the same teams, Webber is the biggest question mark after his statements over the last couple of weeks.

Of the rest Kubica has shown he belongs at the sharp end of the grid with some great drives in mid-table machinery. If Renault can give him a good car and Mercedes do the same for Schumacher it could be another great season.

However, it’s also possible Vettel and Red Bull will learn how to eliminate the mistakes, if that happens it would be difficult to see who could stay with him.

It’s less than three months until testing starts for 2011.