The wait is nearly over!!

The wait is nearly over for those of you like myself who are massive Formula One fans. The opening race of the 2012 season in Melbourne, Australia gets underway in 13 day’s. This year promises to be a fantastic year. The first thing that we have to look at is the fact this year there isn’t just one world champion on the grid but there are 6 with the return of 2007 world champion Kimi Raikkonen who is back in Formula One for the first time since the end of 2009.

The Finn has signed a two year deal to race for the Lotus team. He is joined at Lotus by fellow F1 returnee and reigning GP2 champion Roamain Grosjean.  Lotus are not the only team with an all-new driver line-up for 2012 as Toro Rosso two new driver’s as Australian Daniel Ricciardo joins the team after an impressive debut with HRT in 2011, he is joined at the team by RedBull backed Jean-Eric Vergne.

I believe that RedBull will not have it all their own way this year, they have strugged in preseason testing but have shown good pace. The team introduced a new chassis for the last two day’s on winter testing in Barcelona at the weekend but unfortunately for the team and reigning champion Sebastian Vettel they had reliability issue’s as they had a gearbox failure during the final test session.

I believe that the BBC are going to have to work extra hard this season for the ten races that they are showing live as they have a lot to make up for with the announcement last July that they would share F1 coverage with Sky Sports in 2012 in order for the BBC to save money. As a result of this deal the BBC F1 team have lost many of their key people including Martin Brundle, Ted Kravitz and David Croft.

However the Beeb have managed to hold onto Jake Humphrey, Eddie Jordan, David Coulthard and Lee McKenzie. In fact Lee McKenzie has been tipped to fill in presenting BBC’s F1 coverage in July when Jake will be busy presenting coverage of the London 2012 Olympic Games.

So we are set for some very exciting and intriguing battles both on and certainly off the race track this season.

I for one cannot wait until the new F1 season gets underway. It is going to be a very big year for two drivers in particular Mark Webber and Felipe Massa will be both out to impress their respective bosses as both are out of contract at the end of 2012.

After a very strong 2010 campaign Webber really struggled to match the pace of Vettel in 2011 scoring only one victory compared to Vettel’s eleven. He will be hoping to hit the ground running when the teams take to the track in Melbourne.

As for Felipe Massa, I am extremely surprised that Ferrari has held onto him for 2012, as he did not perform at all for the team last season as the Brazilian failed to score a single podium let alone a win for the Scuderia. The Italian team endured a very tough season last year by their standards as they only managed to win one race when Fernando Alonso won the British GrandPrix at Silverstone. The team have made some major changes to their technical department to help them regain an edge over their rivals this includes recruiting Pat Fry from McLaren as their new technical chief so only time will tell if the changes have worked for the team. Their last driver’s title came in 2007 when Kimi Raikkonen won.

It would appear that the McLaren team have built have a very good car for 2012 as both Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton have performed well in preseason testing. Button is into his third season with the Woking squad and after has certainly established himself as team leader at McLaren after comprehensively beating Lewis Hamilton in 2011 to finish a distant second in the championship.

Lewis will have to pull something very special out of the bag this season as he is under pressure to perform in what is the final year of his current McLaren contract. A deal which there appears to be no urgency to extend despite speculation in recent day’s that Mercedes are possibly lining up for a move on Hamilton should Schumacher retire at the end of this season as his contract with Mercedes runs out.

Mercedes Benz motorsport boss Norbert Haug has been very quick to quell the Hamilton speculation as the team have said that they will sit down with Schumacher to sort out their plans for next season when both party’s are good and ready.

However I believe that if Mercedes were to lure Hamilton away from McLaren they would have a fantastic line-up with Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg who know each other very well after being team-mates in the junior formulae and who would be very evenly matched and would really push each other to get the best out of the car. E will just have to watch this space.

With so many seat’s potentially up for grabs for the 2013 season this year promises to be and incredible season which I CANNOT wait to get underway. Iwill certainly be setting my alarm clock for 4.30AM on Sunday March 18^th!!