Next stop, Melbourne.

So the final winter test has just finished and now everyone heads out to the best place in the entire world, Melbourne. As always, I am jealous of all the F1 folks getting to go to the most glorious city ever. *sigh*

And that nice man Mr Pastor Maldonado will be sat on the F1 grid at Albert Park! I am very excited about this. Excited and terrified. Part of me is trying to come to terms with the fact that he might not make it to the second corner of the race. (If this happens, I will cry. You have been warned.)

But he's done good during testing. OK, he did smash his car up rather a bit - but I'm a firm believer that if you don't smash things up a bit as a rookie then you're just not trying hard enough. I'm sure it was Bob (aka Jaime Alg) who crashed and his team boss actually said that he'd prefer him to make a few mistakes like that because it showed he was trying. As long as it doesn't happen too often, and as long as the driver learns from them...! (And of course if a driver I'm not fond of crashes, I will always claim it's because he's clearly rubbish instead!)

But yeah, in general the boy has done good. It sounds like he's fitting into the team and Frank Williams says he's been told that Pastor is doing very well. Hooray! And he's taking it all seriously, training hard, losing weight, eating better (other than the massive chocolate cake for his birthday this week and all the steak of the world! But you can't blame him for cake and steak! ....I wonder if all the food he eats rhymes? Pasta bake? Milkshake?)

Anyway, I certainly enjoyed the rankings at the end of today's test.... you gotta take the minor victories when you can! (Yes I know there's all sorts of other factors that come into play, shoosh about that, let's just look at the final times...)

Faster than Lewis in the rain. Not a bad start.

I will of course be terrified about Pastor during every race. I want him to do well, in a realistic way. I want him to make it to the end of races. I want him to not make too many big mistakes that make people go "Oh well, he's a pay driver, whinge whinge whinge." (Yes, he's brought a lot of money with him. But he's also the reigning GP2 CHAMPION. Gah.) I want him to learn from Rubens and get on with Rubens and occasionally outshine Rubens. Please.

So yeah, I'll just have to wait and see how it goes. I am continuing to put my faith in him, and I hope he makes me proud. I think he will, though. In fact, he already has.

(In other news: I worry that the McLaren might struggle... although it looks like maybe Jenson will do better with the tyres than Lewis, which is a nice start. I also worry about the Merc suddenly looking faster in testing. Hopefully that's just a case of not being able to trust testing though. Thumbs pressed!)