Scuderia Toro Rosso driver Sebastien Buemi met the media earlier than planned yesterday, as a gearbox control glitch meant the team’s newly launched 2010 contender, the TR5, had to be worked on for a while during the course of the afternoon.

“With all the 'in' and 'out' laps which are normal when you start testing, I did not get many flying laps,” said the Swiss driver, who had completed ten laps before he was forced to stop. “So it is a bit too early to say how the car feels and I’m concentrating on making sure my seat is comfortable and my position in the car. These three days will be mainly devoted to understanding what the car does, rather than going for performance. That will come at the next test.”

Buemi will only get seven or eight days in the car, as he splits the 15 available with his teammate.

“But I still feel much better prepared than at the start of last season,” he claimed. “That doesn’t automatically mean I will do a better job, but I have a much better understanding of how things happen over a race weekend and how the team works. I am hoping for better this year.”

Even though he’s not done many laps yet, Sébastien fully believes that he can already feel the effects of some of the 2010 rule changes.

“When you drive, you are aware the car is a bit longer and the new tyres do not respond in the same way to the previous ones. With the narrower front tyres, it does feel as though there is a bit less grip from them. Jaime and I both had a good end to last season and now we have to focus on the testing that we have available between now and Bahrain.”

“We chose to have the car ready for the first test, while some teams prefer to have more wind tunnel time and sacrifice some testing. As a team with a lot of new people working on the car in the factory, it was important to get as much track time as we could and also for the race team to learn to work together on the track.”

Inevitably, like every other driver here and possibly in the world, Sebastien was asked what he thought about the return of Schumacher.

“Out of the car, it’s a really good thing for the sport; in the car, he will be just another driver I will be trying to beat.”