Jaime Alguersuari has told Spanish publications he is “absolute certain” he will be on the 2013 grid.

“This is the best year of my life,” he told Mundo Deportivo, referring to 2012, the year after his young F1 career stalled when he was dropped by backer Red Bull.

“I’m only 22,” said Spaniard Alguersuari, who is now Pirelli’s main test driver and a co-commentator for British radio. “I’m in the prime of my life.

“It is increasingly clear that what happened with Toro Rosso was not a sporting decision. It was an internal decision and I don’t want to go deeper.”

He sounded confident about the future.

“It is 100 per cent that I will return in 2013. After being with Pirelli I will have very important knowledge. I knew that this transitionary step was necessary and I’m very happy,” said Alguersuari.

“If I had gone (to be test driver) with a team, with all due respect, I’d have no options now.

“I am developing a product (Pirelli) that nobody understands but that is vital for formula one — to know the tyres and to understand them. I’m in the right place,” he is quoted by La Vanguardia newspaper.

“I chose to be with Pirelli because I knew it would be the most important (element) in formula one.

“I know where I am and I know where I’ll be next year,” he insisted.

Martin Whitmarsh is sure McLaren’s recent errors will not affect contract negotiations with Lewis Hamilton.

The British team’s latest mistake not only cost Lewis Hamilton pole in Spain, it put the 2008 world champion to the very back of the grid.

Asked if he worries that the now seemingly constant flow of team gaffes will damage McLaren’s efforts to re-sign Hamilton, Whitmarsh insisted: “No, I don’t.

“He has got to build the support of the team, he has got to feel comfortable doing it, he has got to want to drive and he is in good shape,” British newspapers quote the McLaren team principal as saying.

“I look forward to working with him for a long time to come.”

But Whitmarsh admitted that, given Hamilton’s tumultuous 2011 season, he was worried the British driver might have despaired last Saturday when the team’s refuelling mistake cost the 27-year-old pole.

“I was concerned,” he said, “because it is a pretty tough thing to happen to a driver.

“But I have to say he showed some greatness I had not seen before. By the end of our chat he was consoling me.

“The relationship between Lewis and the team is stronger and better and hopefully we will work together for a long time,” added Whitmarsh.

Five races in, F1′s cleverest brains are still yet to decode the mystery of the bizarre and fascinating 2012 season.

As was the case when he utterly dominated last year, Sebastian Vettel is still leading the drivers’ points chase.

But, before last weekend, if he had been told that Williams’ Pastor Maldonado would be the winner of the Spanish grand prix, the German admitted: “Well, I would have put a lot of money on them!

“I think the odds weren’t bad,” he smiled.

Indeed, the major British bookmaker William Hill was taking bets at 500-1 prior to the Barcelona weekend.

A spokesman confirmed that only two bets at 10 pounds or above were placed on Maldonado prior to qualifying.

“I’m sure Williams don’t understand why they just won the race here,” McLaren’s Jenson Button is quoted by the Guardian newspaper.

But the previously-derided ‘pay driver’ Maldonado is not the only potential new winner in 2012, after Jenson Button, Fernando Alonso, Nico Rosberg and Vettel won the opening four grands prix.

A detailed look at F1′s specialist reporting in the past few weeks shows that Lewis Hamilton, Mark Webber, Kimi Raikkonen, Romain Grosjean, Michael Schumacher, Sergio Perez and Kamui Kobayashi are all also widely regarded as genuine victory candidates in 2012.

And given that their teammates have won grands prix this season, even the struggling Felipe Massa and Bruno Senna should be added to that list.

“Dammit, let’s go for (HRT’s) Karthikeyan!” wrote Chris Hockley in the Sun newspaper.

“It’s really quite crazy right now,” Vettel, who despite his young age would count himself among F1′s currently perplexed purists, told Germany’s Auto Motor und Sport.

“What’s happening is difficult for us to explain,” he added.

The situation has split the F1 audience, with the purists shaking their heads, and others marvelling at the unprecedented spectacle.

“The spectacle has taken over the sport,” said the Paris daily Le Figaro.

“Even the teams can’t be sure who will be the hare and who will be the tortoise at any given track,” wrote Hockley.

Alonso, who is the joint championship leader, is in the purists’ camp.

“Of course it is attractive for the spectators that we are going to Monaco not knowing if we will fight for victory or be left out of the points,” he is quoted by El Pais.

“But in a way, after eleven years in formula one and now I’m at Ferrari, I would like to have more stability,” the Spaniard admitted.

Sir Jackie Stewart said: “What’s going on is unbelievable, which I think is the outcome of the new rules, new tyres — I think it’s many factors,” he told the Spanish sports daily AS.

“What’s happening,” said Maldonado’s race engineer Xevi Pujolar, “is that these tyres are allowing teams who do not have the biggest budgets to be eligible for really good results.

“The reason is that the most important thing now is to have a good setup and also some luck with the temperature.”

Pirelli, F1′s tyre maker, has received both criticism and praise for its huge role.

“Pirelli have been both bold and brave,” Sun journalist Hockley said. “It can’t be easy for a manufacturer to make tyres that sometimes wear out faster than you can say Mercedes.”

Marco Tronchetti Provera, the Italian marque’s company chief, is unapologetic.

“What we have provided is what the teams have asked for, and it was not easy,” Italian language reports quote him saying. “Our engineers have done an extraordinary thing.”

Two days after winning in Spain, Williams is scrambling to put together the equipment it needs to contest next weekend’s Monaco grand prix.

Mere hours after Pastor Maldonado secured the once-great British team’s first victory since 2004, a huge fire broke out in the pits, leaving one team member still in a Barcelona hospital with burns.

“His family are in constant communication and he is in good spirits,” Williams said in a media statement.

The Oxfordshire based team is now making efforts to ensure it can race in Monte Carlo, having lost a lot of equipment in the fire.

Mercifully, however, Bruno Senna’s car appears to have survived, with the Finnish broadcaster MTV3 saying an initial inspection of the chassis showed no devastating damage.

Maldonado’s winning car was in parc ferme at the time of the incident.

“We had a lot of damage and lost a lot of equipment, including IT equipment,” chief operations engineer Mark Gillan said, according to the Daily Mail.

“Over the next couple of days we will be looking at where we are parts-wise.

“We will have everything we need to run operationally at Monaco, but we may be missing a few of the extras because obviously we don’t carry a complete set of spares for everything,” he said.

It is believed more than one rival team has offered to help Williams by loaning the Sir Frank Williams-led outfit any equipment it needs.

A McLaren spokesman confirmed the Woking based team has offered to help.

Germany’s Bild newspaper said Williams’ damage bill runs into the millions.

Team manager Dickie Stanford denied a rumour the fire was caused by a cigarette in the vicinity of Senna’s fuel tank while it was being emptied.

“We don’t know the cause, but we would never allow smoking in the pits,” he insisted.

Williams and F1′s governing FIA are investigating.

The drama stepped up a notch even after the chequered flag in Barcelona.

A couple of hours after Williams’ first win since 2004, something exploded in the British team’s garage, triggering a major fire.

Team members and fire crews battled the blaze as paddock regulars scrambled away from the heavy smoke and police arrived on the scene.

The Telegraph’s Tom Cary said on Twitter there are “multiple injuries”.

It is believed Williams, Force India and Caterham staff – some of whom bravely fought the fire – are being treated in the medical centre, some for smoke inhalation.

An emergency helicopter will ferry others to hospital.

“Couple of our guys got injuries, burns and maybe one broken wrist, no news on Williams guys I hope they’re ok,” wrote Caterham’s Heikki Kovalainen on Twitter.

Rumours indicated the fire could have been caused by a KERS explosion, or possibly fuel, as a burned fuel rig was pulled from the gutted garage.

F1′s astonishing season continues to live up to the hype, as a fifth driver and constructor on Sunday won the fifth grand prix of 2012.

Not only is the victory Pastor Maldonado’s first, his walk up the steps at the Circuit de Catalunya was the first taste of the podium in his two-season F1 career.

It’s also the first Venezuelan triumph in the sport’s history, and a hugely popular victory for Williams, the once-great British team headed by Sir Frank Williams, whose 70th birthday was warmly celebrated in the paddock on Saturday.

“Boy did we need that,” said Williams on BBC television.

And asked how he feels on Sky television, he smiled: “Relief.”

“Some said Maldonado was a pay driver and he didn’t deserve his place in formula one but they’ll be eating their words now,” commented former team driver David Coulthard.

“That was a fantastic drive,” added Coulthard, referring to Williams’ first win since Juan Pablo Montoya in 2004.

Williams enthused: “I didn’t see him (Maldonado) make one single mistake.”

“You can’t really fault him,” agreed Williams’ 1996 world champion Damon Hill.

Amazingly, however, away from the champagne, Sebastian Vettel’s sixth place leaves him at the top of the drivers’ championship, and he is now neck-and-neck with Fernando Alonso, who finished second on Sunday in the improving Ferrari.

Lewis Hamilton, who finished dead last on Sunday and finished eighth, is third in the points classification, ahead of Lotus’ Kimi Raikkonen.

Finn Raikkonen finished third on Sunday, and is the favourite to become F1′s sixth different winner of 2012 in Monaco in a fortnight.

“We showed we still have the speed,” the Lotus driver said after the Spanish grand prix. “If we had a few more laps, we could have fought for a victory.”

The penalty might be harsh, but the loss of Lewis Hamilton’s pole in Spain is just the latest calamitous mistake by McLaren.

That was the tone of the paddock’s reaction to the news late on Saturday that a McLaren gaffe saw the FIA send Hamilton from first to last on the Spanish grand prix grid.

The Sun newspaper called it a draconian “24-place grid penalty” imposed by the FIA after an “astonishing cock-up” by McLaren.

Hamilton was told on the radio to pull over after his pole lap due to a “technical problem”.

Sporting director Sam Michael argued ‘force majeure’, but the stewards ruled that it had been entirely McLaren’s fault that not enough fuel was put into Hamilton’s car to ensure a scrutineering fuel sample.

Writing in the Telegraph, Tom Cary said the severity of the disqualification “raised eyebrows”, but agreed that “McLaren’s mistake was horrendous”.

He said it has been “a season of errors” by the famous British team, who are yet to get Hamilton’s signature on a new contract beyond 2012.

“Hamilton must be seething,” read an article in the Daily Mail newspaper, while The Times laid out McLaren’s “catalogue of errors”.

27-year-old Hamilton’s “raw talent is being thwarted by mishap and cock-up,” said journalist Kevin Eason.

“McLaren are lovely people but how the hell do they get themselves in this position?” wrote the Mirror’s Byron Young on Twitter.

Even the non-English language media agreed.

“It was another great mistake by McLaren that could eventually cost Hamilton the championship,” wrote Livio Oricchio in O Estado de S.Paulo.

Italy’s La Stampa called McLaren’s fuel gaffe a case of “harakiri”.

Germany’s Auto Motor und Sport added: “It was error number 13 for McLaren since last year”.

While highly critical of McLaren’s own-goal, however, the feeling in the paddock is that the stewards’ penalty – although accepted by McLaren – was overly harsh.

“Back of the grid? Way, way too harsh”, said the Mirror’s Young on Twitter.

“Draconian penalty in my view,” agreed PA Sport’s Ian Parkes. “Dropping Q3 time would have sufficed.”

Sky commentator Martin Brundle added: “(I) feel they should have deleted that (Q3) laptime only which would have put him sixth”.

And excluding Hamilton from Q3 altogether would have put him 11th. Now, he will be “lucky to score a point”, Auto Motor und Sport predicted.

In the Independent, however, David Tremayne noted: “Welcome to the draconian world of F1.”

David Croft, the lead Sky commentator, said the FIA stewards had acted correctly.

“A good rule should be one that covers all eventualities with a penalty that acts as a deterrent which in this case is what happened.

“Too little fuel can’t be tolerated,” he added. “It seems harsh but had Lewis taken pole by one thousandth of a second, would it be harsh then?”

The Spanish fans – not Hamilton’s biggest supporters dating back to his spats with Fernando Alonso in 2007 – were happy.

Asked on the El Mundo website whether the penalty was fair, 76 per cent answered yes.

Former F1 driver Mika Salo believes his Finnish countryman Valtteri Bottas is being groomed by Williams for a race seat — in 2012.

When the Toto Wolff-managed Bottas, 22, was announced as the British team’s 2012 reserve, Sir Frank Williams said he would practice on 15 Friday mornings and then “most likely” be replaced with a “more experienced driver” for the rest of those race weekends.

That more experienced driver would ultimately turn out to be Bruno Senna.

So with Brazilian Senna struggling so far in 2012, Salo has revealed he senses things could be about to change.

“Bottas is incredibly respected by the team,” Salo, now a commentator for the Finnish broadcaster MTV3, said.

“When I spoke with Frank Williams, he praised Valtteri to the skies, and said that he belongs in the races.

“I asked him when and he said it wouldn’t be long.

“Yes, I read between the lines that he means this season,” added Salo.

One major spanner in the works, however, is that Senna brings crucial sponsorship to Williams.

“It is a difficult situation for Williams, where both drivers bring money,” Salo acknowledged.

“But the good thing is that Frank Williams is not a businessman first, he is an old racing driver. He thinks about nothing else but how to make his team successful.

“Although Senna is a nice guy, he is not able to drive at the level that he needs to be at.”

When asked about Salo’s theory, Bottas commented: “I have no information.”

A third team has decided to join Red Bull in Abu Dhabi for the young drivers’ test.

Due to the calendar congestion at the end of this season, and also to cut costs, most teams have opted to drop the Abu Dhabi option in favour of testing young drivers in July, at Silverstone.

But Red Bull, and its second team Toro Rosso, are sticking with the original November plan, amid criticism July is too early to be assessing young drivers.

McLaren is now following suit.

“Our plan at McLaren at the moment is to test in Abu Dhabi,” said the British team’s sporting director Sam Michael, who said another factor against Silverstone is that teams are only half-way through their engine mileage allocations in July.

“Engines is a significant factor,” the Australian explained.

“If you want to test at the end of the year, you have so many part-mileage engines that all have a little bit of mileage on them so you can effectively do it for free, in terms of your race engines,” said Michael.

“If you try and do that in the middle of the year, you can’t use your race engines so you have to prepare a special test engine.”

Top teams McLaren and Red Bull have questioned whether F1 should have tested last week.

Since the sport clamped down hard on private testing for cost reasons some years ago, there remained many in the paddock – notably Ferrari – who argued that at least some in-season testing should still take place.

So, for 2012, it was agreed that Mugello would host a three-day session in between the Bahrain and Spanish grands prix.

Every team except HRT attended.

But there were rumblings that not everyone was happy. McLaren, in fact, did not even send its race drivers Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton to Tuscany.

Then, on Friday in Spain, the British team’s regular duo was busily testing in official practice, fielding extravagant sensors and experimental components.

“We would have had a very similar programme whether we went to Mugello or not,” said sporting director Sam Michael.

“All the teams are geared up to not have testing, to not having test teams and that means we’re equipped and do our planning to do all of that work on Friday.

“I think the (Mugello) test itself, personally, I think you could do without it,” Michael continued. “I think it’s a lot of energy and expense during the season that we probably don’t need.

“Of course McLaren will gain a lot out of that test but formula one is all relative, so all we really did was spend a load of money.”

Red Bull’s technical boss Adrian Newey agreed.

“I think we learnt the pasta in Italy is still the best in the world and that’s about it really,” he said when asked about the Mugello test.

“I’d agree with what Sam says. To me, yes you go to the test because it’s available. We all spent money but the value of in-season testing has to be questionable.”

Jaime Alguersuari has concluded he made “a mistake” to remain loyal to Red Bull late last season.

After testing Pirelli’s 2010 Renault car last week at Jerez, the Spaniard moved on to Barcelona to continue his work as a co-commentator for British radio.

However, he revealed recently that he might have been on the 2012 grid, had he not believed Red Bull executives who told him he would be at Toro Rosso this year.

“It was definitely a mistake not to negotiate with other teams,” said the Spaniard, “as I had the opportunity and declined offers,” he told Marca sports newspaper.

“I did that because I had loyalty to Red Bull.”

Asked if he has talked with anyone from Red Bull since his dismissal, the 22-year-old revealed: “The directors, no, the technical team, yes.”

It still pains him that, in explaining their decision, the Red Bull officials like Dr Helmut Marko insisted Alguersuari was not a potential winner.

“If you think that for six years they supported me then they changed their opinion overnight. One day you have a champion, the next you don’t,” he said.

Narain Karthikeyan is not guaranteed his HRT seat for the whole of the 2012 season.

Following what the reporter referred to as a ‘chat’ with the Indian driver, the Times of India claimed Karthikeyan is “a million euros” short of a contract that will see him definitely race through November’s Brazil finale.

The 35-year-old also began the 2011 season for the struggling Spanish team, but was replaced by the Red Bull-funded Daniel Ricciardo mid-season.

The Times of India said securing the extra million in sponsorship is proving “difficult” for Karthikeyan.

“Sponsors are happy to give him money but not to the team, as obviously they do not want to be associated with a struggling outfit,” the report said.

The good news for Karthikeyan, according to the journalist Harish Samtani, is that his sponsorship deal with Tata brings to HRT the Williams gearbox, valued at about EUR 5 million.

The report said the link between Karthikeyan and Williams is the British team’s joint venture with Jaguar, which is owned by the driver’s sponsor Tata.

Michael Schumacher has been pipped at the post in the race to be the world’s richest sportsman.

According to the Sunday Times’ annual listings, the seven time world champion’s (US) $823 million in career earnings is beaten only by golf legend Tiger Woods.

American Woods has earned $869 million in his own ultra-successful career, the newspaper found.

And the Sunday Times said the pair have each earned hundreds of millions of dollars more than other high-earning sportsmen, including Michael Jordan ($516m), Roger Federer ($316m) and David Beckham ($258m).

F1′s two other representatives, Fernando Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen, were way down the top-twenty list, with their respective earnings at about $161 million apiece.

McLaren’s world champions Lewis Hamilton ($89m) and Jenson Button ($85m), meanwhile, appear only on the list for British sportsmen, and they are both outpaced by the $129m earned by former Ferrari driver Eddie Irvine mainly through property investment.

However, Hamilton and Button have each earned more in their careers than David Coulthard, Nigel Mansell, former BAR boss David Richards (all $80m) and Sir Jackie Stewart ($67m).

Those earnings, however, are all dwarfed by Bernie Ecclestone’s estimated $4 billion, although the 81-year-old F1 chief executive does not appear at all on the list of the world’s richest overall.

That list is headed by mega-earners like Sauber sponsor Carlos Slim, who according to the Sunday Times is worth $71 billion.

McLaren tested a higher front nose at the Mugello test last week.

Backmarker Marussia aside, the famous British team is the only team in 2012 to have resisted the temptation of running a high ‘step’ nose, in the wake of new safety regulations.

McLaren was the early frontrunner this season with its MP4-27 car, but Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton struggled notably last time out in Bahrain.

Germany’s Auto Motor und Sport said the team quietly tested the significant nose development on the final day of Mugello testing last Thursday, with test driver Oliver Turvey at the wheel.

The report also speculated that McLaren experimented with an adjustable brake duct system at Mugello, which might be used to regulate tyre temperature for the finicky 2012 Pirellis.

The system would have to be adjusted by the mechanics during a pitstop.

Carlos Sainz jr is on course for a future in formula one.

The 17-year-old Spaniard is the son of Carlos Sainz, the former two-time world rally champion.

Sainz jr, however, has pursued a career in open wheelers, and – now that Daniel Ricciardo and Jean-Eric Vergne have stepped up – he is the new cream of energy drink Red Bull’s junior driver programme.

And another direct link to the world of formula one for Sainz jr is his new sponsorship deal with Cepsa, the Spanish oil company that is also Red Bull-owned Toro Rosso’s main backer.

Sainz jr’s new Cepsa deal is for his participation this year in the British and Euroseries F3 categories, but “Our intention is to continue (beyond 2012),” Cepsa co-chairman Santiago Bergareche is quoted by Marca newspaper.

“Hopefully everything goes well and Carlos will be in that world (F1) one day,” added Cepsa chairman Alfonso Escamez.

He said the deal does not guarantee Sainz jr a future in f1.

“The sponsors have no say on the teams of the drivers. We can try to influence, to give our opinion, but we are not (able to decide) on that side.

“We hope that it does happen, but it will not necessarily.”