Australia - FP1 & 2

Admittedly I haven't had the chance to watch much of the first two practices at Melbourne. It's on really early and I have to work, like most people. Thank god for Sky+ allowing me to watch some of the action whilst eating porridge and drinking tea.

Some observations

Kimi Raikkonen interestingly said that the cars don't differ much from when he was last in Formula One except for DRS, but that's 'just a button'. I've said it before and I'll say it again, Kimi is going to be brilliant this year.

Albert Park looks lovely during the day.

I'd normally be cheering for a wet track but that means teams didn't really get a good feel for race pace or the tyres. This essentially means that most of the times are crap and we really aren't going to get an idea of pace until Q1. This makes things super exciting and I will definitely be dragging myself out of bed for live Quali tomorrow morning. (Expect sleepy, rambly, live tweets from me - @Jetlbomb.)

Mercedes seem to be up there with McLaren and Redbull but will this translate when it comes to the actual race?

Wet racing in Melbourne, yes please! Although, to forecast says it's supposed to be dry.

Hamilton said: “We spent the morning making sure we could switch the tyres on.

“Then, in the afternoon, we didn’t do any running in the wet because the forecast says it’s likely to be dry for the rest of the weekend.

“In those circumstances, it’s important to remain calm, look after the car and make sure we focus on the rest of the weekend.”

It'll be nice to see a more focused Hamilton this year. As a personality, I don't really like him but he's an amazing racing driver, it's a pity personal issues and ego affected his performance last year. (I'd still like to see Button beat him.)

Welcome to the 2012 season!

Image credit: Caterham F1 Team