That's right 44 days to go until the first free practice of the 2011 season. The Off season in Formula 1 seems to get shoter and shorter which means getting the car right during the off season is getting harder due to less development time. The first test of the new season is only a week and half away too. This will be the first shot accross the bows of who is fast and who is slow.

Mclaren aren't bringing their new car to the first test as they want to test last season's car with new bits on it and the new Pirelli tyres. This in theory will allow them to see how much difference each bit they are trying does on a stable car which they should know what to expect from. The risk is they have 3 less days to test the new car than the rest of the field…or most of them anyway.

Williams have or are considering a stock market floatation to help secure their long term security. Not all the team mind just some of it and there isn't a desire to generate more money for the team. If the desire isn't to raise more money i fail to see the point as all Williams and Head will be doing is diluting their own stake in the company.

Thankfully Rome has given up on its plans to try and stage a grand prix. The F1 calendar is busy enough with more traditional grand prixs replaced by Paper races which are extremely dull, Ahem Valencia. Something is already going to have to give in 2012 and 2013 as more races are joining the calendar and a limit of 20 is apparently as far as the teams will go.

Force India have today officially announced their line up as Adrian Sutil and Paul Di Resta which is great as its another British driver on the grid and it will be interesting to see how he transfers accross from the DTM championship. Previously multiple champions have failed to set the grid alight once moving over.

Finally i have decided that i will not be referring to either of the teams passing themselves off as Lotus as Lotus this season. Neither of them should be allowed the name in My opinion but the officially registerred names are Lotus and Renault so for now I will as Keith Collantine  on F1 Fanatic posted in his excellent blog post here: http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/2011/01/26/lotus-vs-lotus-time-to-stop-the-nonsense/. I will use the same naming convention although i do half want to go one step further and refer to fake Lotus as 1 Malaysia Racing.

Apparently South Africa are trying to be re-added to the F1 calendar with a GP based on Moncao in Cape Town. Please for the love of F1 please do not make yet another poor Monaco rip off. Monaco survives becasue its Monaco, it has the history. Velencia, another such poor copy is the worst race on the calendar.

There are a lot of launches in the next week or so so i will try and post updates of them so we can all look at some nice shiny cars.