A brand new year and an exciting Formula 1 season in prospect. The 2010 season lived up to its hype with a cracker of a decider at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. 2010 also proved to be better in terms of spectator viewing and ticket sales. In fact even the pre season test sessions were packed with spectators, mainly Alonso's fans to see him in the red overalls for the first time.
Alonso title loss did have its repercussions at Ferrari with Pat Fry taking over from Chris Dyer as the head of race track engineering. The future role of Chris Dyer is yet to be announced.
Red Bull Racing will be starting the new season as the reigning champions for the first time. In a short span the team has leaped forward to being the team to beat. Will the pressure of retaining the titles get to them ? It would be interesting to see. Another interesting thing would be how well Sebastian Vettel handle the pressure of being the current world champion.
Vitaly Petrov will be driving for Lotus-Renault for the next two years. The first Russian F1 driver was confirmed for another two years sometime back. With a not so bad rookie season, this season would mean more pressure on him to perform.
Pastor Maldonado will be one of the rookie drivers for this season. The Venezuelan driver has the backing of Petróleos de Venezuela, a state-owned petroleum company of the Venezuelan government. However it would probably be inappropriate to consider him as a pay driver. Maldonado is the current GP2 champion driving for the Rapax Team
Paul di Resta could be given a race seat at Force India. If that turns out to be true, then Liuzzi would have lost his race seat although he has a contract for another year with Force India. It could also turn out that Nico Hulkenberg would be given the reserve role at Force India and also the friday first free practice duties.
Daniel Ricciardo is the Toro Rosso reserve driver. Unlike last year where the two race drivers handled the free practice sessions, Ricciardo would be testing for Toro Rosso in first free practice sessions. The Australian has shown to be fast topping the times in the young drivers test programme last year is likely to pressurize the Toro Rosso drivers in his bid for a race seat.
Finally this year would add more pressure on Michael Schumacher to perform. Schumacher had forgettable come back last year, but his performances improved over the latter half of the season. With a new tyre supplier this year it would interesting to watch him this year. Schumacher attributed most of his misfortunes to the weak front Bridgestone tyres and how the 2010 Mercedes was handling them. After the Pirelli tests last year, Schumacher seemed quite satisfied with them and is hoping for the new 2011 Mercedes to adjust to the tyres better
