With Bahrain off the calendar, the F1 circus headed back to Spain for a monster 5 day test, which did little to help anyone understand... well, anything much at all really.
Over the 5 days, Webber, Vettel, Perez (!), Schumacher & Rosberg were quickest, although you have to keep in mind that teams only have 1 car on the go, so you won't get Hamilton and Button battling each other for fastest lap of the day.
Actually, by the look of it, neither of the McLaren boys will be battling anyone much, except maybe Hispania, unless they work miracles on their car pretty soon, so slow and fragile was their progress at this test.
Perez was a surprise in the Sauber, but they did that last winter too, and after that were stunningly mediocre. Barely anyone ran at all on the last day, so bad was the weather, but Mercedes can be pleased that Schumi got the fastest time of the whole test, and upgrades seem to have fixed the time loss they had against the front runners.
So, what do we know? Red Bull seem fast and reliable, Ferrari ditto, McLaren are a bit duff at the moment, Mercedes are going well, but beyond that it's pretty hard to tell. Excitingly, the fast-fading Pirelli's look increasing likely to need changing 3 or 4 times per race, with a huge time-loss for those foolhardy enough to stay out too long.
Oh, and Hispania finally showed up, eventually got around to launching their car, but forgot to bring enough bits to actually run the damn thing. Mind you, seeing as how they didn't make it to testing at all last season, I guess that counts as progress.
Less than 2 weeks to go then (hopefully)....
(I've dug out some 7" singles and dusted off the gramophone - currently listening to Peter Schilling's "The Different Story")
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