AT&T Williams’ Rubens Barrichello has won the prestigious Gregor Grant prize at the Autosport Awards. Held at London’s Grosvenor House Hotel, the British motorsport industry’s annual awards evening last night honoured Rubens’ extensive racing career and achievements across the sport’s various formulae. Rubens celebrated 300 Formula One races at this year’s Belgian Grand Prix and will contest his 19th season with the AT&T Williams team in 2011, making him the longest serving driver in the history of the sport.

Established in 1982, Autosport’s awards are handed out in recognition of particular achievement. Voted for by a panel put together by the magazine, its readers can also influence the outcome when they are given the opportunity to vote for their favourite drivers, team personnel and cars at the end of the racing season.

Michael Schumacher was in action for the MERCEDES GP PETRONAS team today for the second and final day of the Pirelli tyre test at the Yas Marina Circuit in Abu Dhabi.

Michael continued the programme begun by team-mate Nico Rosberg yesterday and revisited many of the set-up evaluations to further improve the team’s understanding of the new tyres. Michael covered 74 laps and finished the day in second place on the timesheets.

The Force India F1 Team rounded off its 2010 racing year - its most successful season in F1 to date - by welcoming a new partner to the fold. For the first time the team got experience of running with Pirelli tyres, which will be supplied to all teams in the FIA Formula One World Championship from 2011 onwards.

One day after the conclusion of the young driver test, Force India was back at the Yas Marina Circuit for the two day test, with Adrian Sutil and Paul di Resta sharing driving duties on day one and Paul and Tonio Liuzzi participating in day two.

Preparations for the 2011 season with new Formula One tyre supplier Pirelli got underway at the Yas Marina Circuit in Abu Dhabi today with Nico Rosberg as the first of the MERCEDES GP PETRONAS drivers to evaluate the new tyres.

Nico’s programme for today was to complete an initial performance evaluation to various set-up parameters with the two tyre compounds provided by Pirelli, the medium and soft, which was successfully completed over 81 laps.

An excellent drive by Nico Rosberg today saw him finish in fourth place at the final race of the season in Abu Dhabi. Michael Schumacher was out of the race on the first lap after spinning and subsequently being hit by another car.

A good strategy call from the team to bring Nico in under the safety car on the first lap to switch to the harder prime tyres put him in a great position on track and an assured drive from there allowed Nico to make up six places on his starting position.

Lotus Racing secured its primary goal of tenth place in the 2010 FIA Formula One World Championship when Heikki Kovalainen finished the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix in 17th place. Jarno Trulli’s race came to an unfortunate end on lap 51 and finished in the garage after his car suffered a rear wing failure with just three laps left.

Heikki Kovalainen (17th, fastest lap 1.45.378) : “What a fantastic end to our season. The race itself was just great, right from when the lights went out. I got the best start of the season, made up places immediately and from that point on I just got my head down and got on with it. Everything went perfectly according to plan. The tyres weren’t really degarding and as the car got lighter and the fuel burnt away I was able to keep putting in what felt like qualifying laps throughout the whole race. I was able to pull away a gap to the cars behind me and we managed the traffic really well all race. After I came out of the pits I had to let a few cars past which cost me several seconds, but that wasn’t a problem as I could keep pulling away from my direct rivals. This is the perfect way to end our first season, and gives us a huge boost for next year. We finished on a high, achieved all our goals and we have a very exciting future ahead of us. Thank you to the whole team for a fantastic season – I can’t wait for next year.”