Kimi Raikkonen tested a two year old Lotus - then Renault - this morning in Valencia as preparation for his return to Formula 1, after being away himself for two years.

Although testing is banned until the beginning of February, Raikkonen was able to take advantage of a rule that allows drivers to use F1 cars that are two years old.  Raikkonen drove the 2010 R30 at the Circuito Ricardo Tormo.

It will be intersting to see how the new drivers - Raikkonen and Romain Grosjean - perform this year at Lotus, after they replaced Vitaly Petrov, Nick Heidfeld and Bruno Senna, from last season.

After changing its name to Caterham following the long dispute over the Lotus name, the team that used to be Team Lotus, has also announced that it is moving out of its factory in Norfolk to a site in Leafield, which is closer to the rest of the F1 factory bases in England.

"We propose moving the F1 and GP2 teams to the new site in or around August 2012, giving us ample time to build up the infrastructure required to house all the critical elements of both teams, and propose moving Caterham Cars into a new, bespoke development and production facility on the same site in due course," said Tony Fernandes, the team director.  "We are able to build the new home for Caterham Cars from the ground up on the Leafield site, giving us a permanent home in the perfect location for two of the primary arms of the Caterham Group. We will be consulting with all our team about the proposed move before we make any decisions about exactly which functions will be located to the new site."

Bruno Senna has joined the Williams team, where his uncle Ayrton Senna raced in his last year, in 1994.  It is Bruno's third season in F1, and he appears ecstatic about joining his uncle's old team.

Ayrton died in a racing accident at Williams in 1994 at the San Marino Grand Prix at Imola, Italy.

Autosport today has reported that it has learned that the FIA has decided to leave the Drag Reduction System the same in 2012 as it was in 2011.  The DRS was one of things that contributed to more exciting racing in 2011 as it permitted cars to overtake more easily, when drivers were able to move their car's rear wing in a DRS zone if they were within a second of car ahead.

This helped in some places, but made little difference in others - like Monaco, and even Australia.  While the FIA will not change the rule, they will change the length of some of the zones, Autosport said.  The DRS zones - not to be confused with braking zones - were allotted by the FIA to each track, with some tracks having more than others.  It was sometimes criticized as making passing too easy, but in general did change the face of the race last year.