Here I go - Formula BMW in 2010 :-)

On Friday (12th Feb) we finally signed a contract with EurAsia for me to race in F-BMW Pacific this year. It's been a long story to get this far and we still haven't got all the sponsorship we need but we've got enough to be able to sign the contract.

I've done 10 days of testing now and it's been fun, hard and tiring all at the same time. Driving a single seater is completely different to a kart - there's a lot more to think about (like gears!) but I think now I'm getting used to it and my times are improving fast. On the 1st day of proper testing my best time was 2 min 19 secs but now I'm consistently doing 2 min 13 secs so much faster - I've just got to get a couple of seconds faster to be right on the pace. The team seems to be very confident about my ability to find that time - and so am I :-)

Physically it's much harder as well. After each practice session my body - especially my arms and neck - aches like mad but I'm doing more gym work now and that's helping a lot.

During the next 6 months, I'll write about the testing, practice and races and so I better introduce some of the people I'll be talking about.

Mark Goddard is one of the team principles for EurAsia and manages the technical side of the team. He was a top class F3 driver and understands driving and racing really well. The most important thing he does is help the drivers look through the data from the car - in F-BMW we can see times, revs, acceleration, braking and turning data and looking at this (and comparing to other drivers) make it easy to see where I can improve and what mistakes I'm making.

Martin Quick is another team principle. He mainly handles the financial and logistic side of the team but he was also a really good driver so can help Mark on the technical side as well.

Greg Wheeler is the main engineer for the team. He was Alex Yoong's engineer in F1 and A1GP so is very experienced. He's been a really big help on understanding how the car works and how set-up changes make the car feel different.

Alex Yoong is my driver coach. His experience in single seaters is a great help to me.

My team-mates are:

Richard Bradley: Richard was British KF1 kart champion in 2008 and has a whole bunch of other successes. He's 18 and lives in Singapore now. F-BMW is his 1st single seater experience but he's already showing how fast he is.

Kotaro Sakurai. Kotaro is an ace Japanese karter. Only 15 so 6 months younger than me but he's done a bit more single seater driving than me and is seriously fast already.

Duvashen Padayachee is Australian. He's 19 and only started karting 2 years ago but has made up for lost time quickly and is going well in the F-BMW testing.

With 4 rookies in the team, Eurasia have had to do a lot of training and coaching but the team is looking strong. All my team-mates are good drivers and nice people so we're going to have a lot of fun and even more competition between us :-)

Finally, of course there's my management team - my Dad (and Mum and grandparents), Sayed and John have worked hard to make this happen and have supported me through all the practice sessions.

It's going to be a very busy year for me - 6 F-BMW events, kart races whenever I can, gym sessions and - most importantly (before my mum and everyone else shouts at me!) school exams as well. Hopefully I'll be able to do them all well and keep some kind of social life going as well :-)