Williams signs Bottas for the future

Besides McLaren’s car, another important news on the F1 world today was the signing of finnish rising star Valtteri Bottas by Williams for a testing/reserve seat. Valtteri, 20 years old, has been doing car racing for 3 years and his performance has been very impressive: he started out in 2007 in the Northern European Formula Renault 2.0 championship (NEC) and was 3rd in it, getting 2 podiums in his very first race weekend and finishing the season with 2 wins. The following year he stayed in the NEC and utterly dominated it with 12 wins in 16 races (something the portuguese will remember as “our” António Felix da Costa was his team-mate and finished 2nd to Bottas in the championship, in a learning year), and at the same time did the more prestigious FRenault 2.0 Eurocup – winning the championship as well, with a small advantage over aussie Daniel Ricciardo.

Bottas driving his F3 car on the way to a Masters victory in Zandvoort

Last season he moved to the F3 Euroseries, which is one of the most competitive categories below F1 and has been feeding many drivers to it for years, driving for the leading team ART. He was 3rd and couldn’t match his team-mate Jules Bianchi’s superb pace over the year, but that was quite okay as you couldn’t expect more from a rookie season; Bottas won the most important race of the season anyway, the F3 Masters. He will stay there for another F3 season in 2010 and at the moment you’d have to tip him as the big favourite for the title.

The association with Williams will do him good. In the last few years the team has invested in Nico Rosberg and Nico Hulkenberg when youngsters (both ART drivers in the junior series!) and properly trained them all the way up to giving them a Formula 1 race seat. This guy is likely to go the same path.

New Ferrari revealed – and the Williams

Ferrari presented today their new F1 car, named the “F10″, and it looks like this:

It has a nose similar to last year’s Red Bulls, as expected, and I must say I quite like it. Even the livery somehow seems much more natural and less obnoxious than in last week’s testing photo. I am however a little surprised that the car isn’t much fatter, given that it will now have a much larger fuel tank. People on the forums are saying that the car design is underwhelming and a sign they’re playing catch-up against Red Bull, but I’d rather wait for its performance on track – my technical knowledge isn’t anywhere near good enough to even understand the design options of the car, so in these cases it’s better to just not say anything at all.

But here’s a surprise! Autosport managed to take a photo of the brand new Williams FW32 as well, which was today on the hands of Nico Hulkenberg, on a shakedown run today at Silverstone prior to next week’s tests in Valencia:

That’s another high nose, and it makes the car look pretty damn good! The nice blue livery helps, specially since it isn’t full of sponsors yet – apparently they’re still going to put a few more stickers on it. That’s even if I’m a little surprised that they’re not going with that great 100% dark blue testing livery of the last few years.