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Sunday sees the new year’s Formula 1 season in with the first race taking place in Bahrain. Here’s the complete schedule for 2010:

Michael Schumacher‘s ride for the season has been unveiled. The Mercedes Petronas RB1was unveiled in the Mercedes-Benz museum in Stuttgart.

The traditional Mercedes silver is incorporated along with the necessary blue colouring of the team’s main sponsor. Some very odd detailing on the front wings and an unusually long front section makes the car seem somewhat ungainly when viewed from the angle shown in the image above. The name of the car is the RB1. RB stands for Ross Brawn, the team principal.

Michael Schumacher has announced his return to Formula 1 racing, a move that will encourage me to once again follow a sport that has had very little appeal for me in the past few years. It’s not that Schumacher‘s return will change the way races are run or diminish the boredom of racing that generally isn’t. Instead, it’ll be good to have a driver to support again…

Schumacher moves from Ferrari to an all-German Mercedes-Benz for at least three seasons.

Gentlemen, start your engines!

With the first race in this year’s Formula 1 Championship to get underway this month, the sport’s governing body has implemented some significant rule changes. The rule changes do not simply govern that cars require very different technical specifications, but the allocation of points is also very different to preceding seasons.

Drivers race for points. This year, the driver who wins the most races will be the world champion, regardless of the number of points he has gathered. This should make complex calculations less necessary and lower the odds of Ecclestone potentially interfering behind the scenes. Should two drivers end up having won the same number of races, the existing scoring system for finishes during the season will be implemented. That scheme awards 10/8/6/5/4/3/2/1 points based on the finish position. Teams have successfully lobbied against the change in the points system.

From an aerodynamic point of view, very obvious aerodynamic aids, such as winglets and barge boards, have had to be removed. The rear wing is much narrower than in the past and front wings lower and wider.

The number of race engines a driver has available during a season has been restricted to only eight, and only four engines are available to the team for testing. This is a cost cutting measure. Engines may be used in any sequence, unlike last season where each engine had to be used for two races in a row. The rev limit for engines has been reduced from 19000 rpm to 18000 rpm.

This year will see the reintroduction of slick tyres with grooves. This is to shift the emphasis back to grip achieved by mechanical means rather than aerodynamic aids.