First blood to Seb and RedBull as track action gets underway in Austin

So Austin, roared to life this morning with he sound of 24 V8 Formula One engine's flying around the Circuit Of The Americas track as team's got to grips quiet literally with the new circuit. Formula One is back in the US. This morning's session was really a sighter for all the team's and driver's to see what the track surface was like and to how close to the limit they could push their cars.

In some cases, driver's were right on the edge with many of them going off the circuit at turn 19, the second last corner. At the start of the session, many of the driver's were complaining about the severe lack of grip on track.

The circuit has had no proper action despite a demonstration run by Mario Andretti and Jerome D'Ambrosio in the Lotus F1 Car at a promotional event to celebrate the official opening of the circuit.

And unlike other circuits that the F1 circus travels to there are no support races this weekend in Texas, despite this however there was a Ferrari Track Challenge a couple of day's ago. With the temperature's in Austin for the time of year being unseasonably low the team's and driver's are going to have to work extremely closely with Pirelli to make sure that they can get the most out of the medium and harder compound tyre that have been brought to the track.

So to FP1, there were no real surprises as the session went on. RedBull's Sebastian Vettel set the fastest time of 1m 38.125s a massive 1.4 seconds ahead of Lewis Hamilton's McLaren. Sebastian's title rival Fernando Alonso was third fastest with a time of 1m 40,337s with Jenson Button 4th in the second McLaren.

However I have learned, to take the time's from Friday Practice 1 with a pinch of salt as they are in a way meaningless as the team's are just evaluating the track conditions and particularly in Texas as it is an unknown entity. I mean you can gather all the data you want in the simulator however it is not until you actually drive the circuit for the first time that you begin to understand it's characteristics and how the car feels and reacts to the track surface.

In my opinion, it will this afternoon's session that will provide the real test for the team's and driver's as the begin to run race simulations and work on tyre and car set ups for the race.

In my opinion, the Circuit Of The America's is going to provide a real challenge for the drivers. And I firmly believe that out of all the new circuits that have been introduced into Formula One in recent season's this circuit is the best of the lot. The reason I say this is because the lay out of the track has managed to incorporate some of the greatest corners from other tracks without it being a complete copy of other tracks on the calendar.

I also believe that the circuit could prove to be one of the more demanding one's on the drivers, for starters it is anti clockwise and this is always an added challenge to any racing driver.