27/01/2014
NEWS STORY
As more and more cars are unveiled, the opening pre-season test gets underway at Jerez on Tuesday.
Thus far all but Lotus are confirmed, though a couple of teams have yet to publically finalise their driver programmes.
World Champion Sebastian Vettel gets first taste of the RB10, the German driving the car on the first two days before handing over to new teammate Daniel Ricciardo.
Similarly, Ferrari will have Kimi Raikkonen in action for the first two days with Fernando Alonso taking over on Thursday and it's a similar thing at McLaren, where Jenson Button has Tuesday and Wednesday and Kevin Magnussen Thursday and Friday.
Mercedes will alternate its drivers, Lewis Hamilton in action on Tuesday before handing over to Nico Rosberg then back to the Briton again, while Toro Rosso adopts a similar strategy with Jean-Eric Vergne alternating with Daniil Kvyat.
At Sauber, Esteban Gutierrez drives the first two days before handing over to Adrian Sutil, while Force India this morning confirmed that all three of its drivers will be in action; Sergio Perez on Tuesday, Nico Hulkenberg on Wednesday, Daniel Juncadella on Thursday, with Friday yet to be decided.
Caterham also has its reserve driver on duty, Robin Frijns getting his first taste of the VJM07 on Thursday. Rookie Marcus Ericsson has the first two days in the new car whilst, surprisingly, Kamui Kobayashi is limited to Friday.
At Williams Valtteri Bottas gets to try the FW36 for the first two days before handing over to his new, highly experienced, teammate, Felipe Massa.
Other than how these (thus far) monstrosities perform on track, especially in terms of reliability, one of the main talking points is going to be how they sound. Thus far we've had to rely on a few brief sound bites from the manufacturers.
With the raft of new rules, the biggest in living memory, we are unlikely to see the sort of sandbagging that made previous pre-season tests such a lottery - remember when Arrows, always out to impress a potential sponsor, pulled something ludicrous out of the hat?
Instead, as they look ahead to the two Bahrain tests, and the vital development period leading up to them, the teams will be doing exactly what it says on the tin 'testing', as opposed to attempting to find the limit.
Though very few pieces of the 2014 jigsaw will fall into place this week, we should certainly get a few pointers.
Chris Balfe