Two days ahead of the rest of the world, a German newspaper has revealed the first photo of Mercedes’ formula one car for 2011.

Bild am Sonntag published a photo showing the W02 with a very high and wide nose, a shinier silver livery and a reversion to a more conventional airbox.

The car will only be officially launched on Tuesday morning before it is tested for the first time as pre-season testing kicks off at Valencia.

“It has a shiny new silver paint, which really illumates the beautiful shapes,” said the German marque’s motor sport vice-president Norbert Haug.

He said the goal is to race with the front-runners this season, and team boss Ross Brawn revealed that designers have been aggressive with the W02.

“Last year I had to turn down some of the engineers’ interesting suggestions. Now it’s different. We are much better organised,” said the Briton.

Added Michael Schumacher: “The guys have done a very good job, I am very satisfied.

“We decided to start work on the car very early last season. We knew quite quickly what was wrong with the 2010 car and have improved significantly in all of those areas.”

And Brawn said of of the W02′s proudest boasts is its KERS system.

“It is very light, very compact, and will affect the balance hardly at all. It is a big step,” he revealed.

After dropping out of contention for the final 2011 race cockpit at HRT, Davide Valsecchi could still be in formula one this year.

The Italian website 422race.com claims the 24-year-old Italian, who has raced in GP2 in the last few years and impressed F1 chiefs with his pace at the Abu Dhabi test last November, is set to join Team Lotus.

Valsecchi will be a test driver alongside young Brazilian Luiz Razia, who was with the Virgin team in 2010.

The Italian report said Valsecchi will get a half-day of testing with Lotus at the Bahrain test in March, and probably then two outings on the Friday mornings of the Australian and Malaysian grands prix.

And Razia, another GP2 driver, will do as many as “five Friday free practice” sessions in 2011, added the report.

F1 marketing specialist Zak Brown has been named as a potential successor for the sport’s long-standing chief Bernie Ecclestone.

American Brown, who is racing alongside Martin Brundle and Mark Blundell in this weekend’s Daytona 24 hour race with his own team, also heads Just Marketing, the leading sponsorship agency that represents several high-profile formula one team backers.

A report in the Guardian newspaper said the 39-year-old, whose company fronts for F1 sponsors including LG, Johnnie Walker and Lenovo, said Brown is well poised to “become the most influential man in his sport”.

He is already close to Ecclestone, who attended the launch last year of Brown’s Le Mans team United Autosports, with Brown confirming he has “done a lot of business” with F1′s 80-year-old chief executive.

As for one day replacing the famous Briton, Brown laughed: “That’s flattering.

“Certainly this is my life,” he explained, before adding that Ecclestone is not looking to retire any time soon.

“I think it will be impossible to replace Bernie,” said Brown. “You’d certainly have to approach it with a bit of a team.

“There’s a lot I don’t know,” he admitted. “I’ve not done television contracts but those things can be learned, or there are other people that have the expertise.

“I want to be in the sport forever, so if I were ever to get the call to participate in the future of formula one in some way shape or form, I’d jump all over that,” added Brown.

Force India on Wednesday finally confirmed one of F1′s worst-kept secrets.
It has been known unofficially for some time that Paul di Resta is stepping up to a race seat this year alongside Adrian Sutil.

The holdup has been the situation surrounding the ousted Vitantonio Liuzzi, who possessed a fully-binding race contract for 2011.

The setting for Wednesday’s official announcement was a whiskey sponsor’s Glasgow headquarters, close to the birthplace of the debuting di Resta.

German Sutil said it is a shame that his countryman Nico Hulkenberg, who will have the reserve role in 2011, was not able to stay on the F1 grid after his solid debut with Williams last year.

“Nico definitely deserves to be in formula one,” Sutil told Auto Bild Motorsport. “It’s a shame for him, but being test driver is better than nothing.”

Said Hulkenberg: “My motivation is to convince the team of my skills in order to be back in a race cockpit in 2012.”

The 23-year-old is scheduled for a few days of driving during the pre-season tests, with Force India revealing he has agreed a “long term partnership”.

Luca di Grassi has dismissed reports linking him with a test driver role at Pirelli this year as “speculation”.
But the Brazilian, who lost his Virgin race seat after just a single season in F1, admitted he might be interested in the tyre testing role.

Reports said di Grassi, 26, could be set to replace Pirelli’s secondary tester Romain Grosjean, who is returning to GP2 full-time in 2011.

“The news about Pirelli test driver role are just speculation at this stage but sure it would be interesting to understand the tyre better,” di Grassi wrote on Twitter on Wednesday.

Nico Rosberg has shrugged off his allocation of the higher car number at Mercedes for the second season in succession.

Last year, with Michael Schumacher coming out of retirement, Rosberg agreed to relinquish the lower number 3 because the returning seven time world champion is “a bit superstitious” and prefers to wear odd race numbers.

Schumacher went on to score 70 fewer points than his younger cohort but, for the forthcoming 2011 season, Mercedes has once again agreed to allocate the premier odd number (7) to the 42-year-old.

“We talked about it in the team about a month ago,” Rosberg told the Stuttgarter Zeitung newspaper. “Michael wanted the number 7.

“First, because he is superstitious and thinks odd numbers are luckier, and secondly because of his 7 world championships. I had no problem with that.

“Anyway, the number 7 has only ever caused me bad luck in my career so I’m happy with 8,” smiled Rosberg, 25.

Meanwhile, Rosberg said he was in Mercedes’ driver simulator at Brackley last week where he got to grips with the additional buttons for 2011, including to charge and deploy KERS and operate the adjustable rear wing.

“At the beginning it was very difficult,” he admitted. “There are so many things to consider at the same time.”

There would never have been a single mention of team orders at Red Bull had Sebastian Vettel enjoyed a run of technical reliability in 2010.
That is the claim of Helmut Marko, Red Bull’s ever-controversial driver manager and motor racing right-hand man to team owner Dietrich Mateschitz.

Vettel, the new reigning champion, and his teammate butted heads last year when Webber led the championship and pundits pushed the wisdom of a team strategy in the Australian’s favour.

There were claims of team favouritism in Vettel’s favour but Red Bull clung to its stated policy of equality and the young German ultimately won the battle.

But speaking to Sport Bild, Austrian Marko hinted that Vettel’s dominance last year was muted only by technical setbacks.

“Without the 66 points he (Vettel) lost due to technical defects, the standoff with Mark Webber would never have occurred,” he said.

Team orders have been legalised for 2011 but Marko is adamant that Red Bull’s policy will not change.

“We don’t use them (team orders) because the sporting aspect should be the primary focus of formula one,” he insisted.

Team Lotus has finally confirmed reports that its 2011 car will be ready for the first test of the pre-season at Valencia.
However, it had been reported that the car – to be called TL11 – would make its track debut on 1 February.

In fact, Heikki Kovalainen will give the car its maiden outing on 2 February — the second day of the opening group test.

The team explained that it has “opted to take advantage of the 2011 rules and not run on 1 February, replacing that date with a private test day and on-track filming on Friday 4 February”.

An online launch event will take place at 5am GMT – the middle of the day in team boss Tony Fernandes’ native Malaysia – on Monday 31 January.

And after Kovalainen’s first test day on Wednesday, teammate Jarno Trulli will be driving on Thursday.

“We tossed a coin and I won,” revealed Finn Kovalainen on Twitter.

A prominent race engineer has returned to Williams for the 2011 season.
Spaniard Xevi Pujolar switched from the famous British team to the new Spanish outfit HRT last year.

At Williams, he formerly worked with the likes of Mark Webber, Juan Pablo Montoya and Ralf Schumacher and most recently Kazuki Nakajima, and this year will engineer fellow Spanish speaker Pastor Maldonado, according to virutasf1.com.

Another departed HRT team member is press officer Tabatha Valls, who has moved to Virgin.

Two candidates have reportedly fallen off the radar as HRT considers the completion of its driver lineup for 2011.

Arguably the most highly-rated driver in the running for the cockpit alongside Narain Karthikeyan this year was Italian Davide Valsecchi, who was comfortably the quickest of the new team rookies at last November’s Abu Dhabi test.

But team boss Colin Kolles admitted recently that Valsecchi’s sponsorship budget was not yet big enough for the drive, and Turun Sanomat in Finland now reports that he is no longer on the list of candidates.

Another driver no longer in the running, according to veteran Turun Sanomat reporter Heikki Kulta, is 24-year-old Venezuelan Rodolfo Gonzalez.

“In the next few days there will be several announcements,” Kolles said in an interview released on Tuesday.

In the same interview, Romanian-born German Kolles seemed to deny reports that HRT’s 2011 car is simply last year’s car with some modifications.

“As soon as the 2011 car is ready, we will implement it,” he said. “The plan is to use the 2011 car at the Bahrain test. The 2011 car will be a completely new car, and will be called F111.”

Lucas di Grassi could become a test driver with the sport’s new official tyre supplier Pirelli in 2011.

After just a single season on the grid, the Brazilian has lost his Virgin drive for 2011 to the better-funded Belgian Jerome d’Ambrosio.

Finland’s Turun Sanomat is reporting that di Grassi, 26, has been linked with Pirelli’s ongoing private track testing programme for 2011.

Main Pirelli tyre tester Pedro de la Rosa’s contract runs out in a few days, but it is expected that the Spaniard will continue to head the marque’s development this year.

Di Grassi, meanwhile, could be set to replace de la Rosa’s driving deputy Romain Grosjean.

Grosjean has been signed to return to the GP2 grid in 2010 with the DAMS team.

Given DAMS’ close links with Renault, and the fact that Grosjean is expected to join Renault in 2011 as third driver, a parallel role at Pirelli for the Frenchman is unlikely on the grounds of partiality.

Helmut Marko has kept firing amid the war of words between 2010 championship rivals Red Bull and Ferrari.

Marko recently likened Ferrari’s hiring of strategy boss Neil Martin as a move to poach Red Bull’s “spirit”, prompting Luca di Montezemolo’s retort that the Austrian team doesn’t “know how to behave as champions”.

“This was all blown up by a newspaper,” Red Bull consultant and driver programme manager Marko insisted, according to Auto Bild Motorsport.

The saga did, however, highlight the relationship between the two sides, with both Ferrari and Red Bull to use a Magneti Marelli KERS next year.

“We are both working with Magneti Marelli as the basis (of the system),” confirmed Marko, “but the real development will take place in the fine details.”

Another common ground between the two sides is sister team Toro Rosso’s Ferrari engine supply, but on this matter Marko poured fuel onto the fire.

“We stand to learn nothing from Toro Rosso’s customer engines, which – anyway – are not on the same level as the real Ferrari engines,” he said.

Toro Rosso will use Ferrari’s KERS system in 2011.

‘Simulator sickness’ does not explain Michael Schumacher’s disappointing return to F1 alongside Nico Rosberg in 2010.

That was the gist of a statement issued by Mercedes following reports this week that the seven time world champion did not work in the team’s Brackley simulator last year due to motion sickness.

A source had told Dutch website f1today.nl that while Rosberg’s setup work was “largely done” by the time he got to a grand prix, “Michael begins with a basic setting” because of his inability to work effectively in the simulator.

But Mercedes clarified in a statement that the reports were wrong to say Schumacher, 42, has only been suffering from motion sickness since returning to F1 after an initial career spanning 91 wins.

“Throughout his career, Michael from time to time has been susceptible to simulator sickness which has affected the length of time that he can spend on a simulator,” said the German team.

“Michael has not been disadvantaged as together with his engineers he has made his simulation work effective,” added Mercedes.

However, the statement did say Schumacher’s problem with simulators was “exacerbated” in 2010 because Mercedes’ technology is not yet up to scratch with some of its rivals.

Ferrari’s 2011 formula one car will be called F150, the famous Italian team has announced.

The car, to be launched and given its track debut on Friday at Ferrari’s headquarters, is named in tribute of the 150th anniversary of Italian unification.

“All the men and women who put so much effort and passion into their work at Maranello share the pride and responsibility of representing our country around the world and it is in this spirit that we chose to dedicate this car to an event that is so important for the whole of Italy,” said Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo.

A statement issued by the Maranello based team also said Giorgio Napolitano, the president of the Italian Republic, “took the opportunity to wish the Scuderia the best of luck for the forthcoming season” after being told of the 2011 car’s name.

Last year’s Ferrari was called the F11. Until now, the codename for the 2011 project was 288.

F150 is also known as a model of Ford’s famous series of full-size pickup trucks.

Subsidence of the track surface is the main reason for the improvement works taking place at China’s grand prix venue in Shanghai, it has emerged.

The April event has only a provisional date on the 2011 calendar, with re-approval of the 7-year-old circuit to only be possible after an FIA inspection in March.

It was previously believed that the necessary improvements at the $240 million facility were in the area of the track surface and rain drainage.

The local race organisers have now confirmed that the main problem is subsidence – damage to the track surface due to downwards movement of the ground – at three corners.

“There should be no problem,” Yang Yibin, manager of race promoter Juss Event, is quoted by the Shanghai Daily.

“We’ve communicated well with the FIA, our plan has been approved and the grand prix will be on time.”

The report said the serious subsidence is present at turns 1, 8 and 14.

The Shanghai International Circuit was built in 2003 on former swampland.

“Subsidence is normal because of the soft soil in Shanghai, which the circuit was built above,” Yang said.

And circuit engineering manager Sun Liang told the Oriental Morning Post that artificial elevation changes were built into the layout by using “complex materials”.

“Because some parts of the circuit are on the ground while some parts are not, as time goes by it’s normal for some subsidence,” he said.