Aloha, children of the night! We’re gearing up for Jerez once again – can’t afford flying to Abu D’s and B-reigns anyway.

We was going thru our extensive picturesque pictorial picture archive from Jerez, yes, and we’d like to share our fondest memories of this amazing circuit with you.

Who can forget the 201o winter testing? Rain, hurricane winds and sixty foot waves greeted your humble servant and threatened to drown him or separate him from his beloved Fuji BlurPix camera. But we persisted – and bribed our way into the paddock, what a glorious day that was!

We was gettin’ all potted up on Virgin Racing’s new car and their 100% CFD approach.

Nick Wirth was delighted before the test (they’re all constantly “delighted” in F1 these days): “I am delighted that we have successfully shaken down the VR-01. To achieve 100 kilometre of running out of the box is a great achievement with only a few minor issues along the way. We have acquired some good information to feed straight back into design for the development of new parts, which we may even be testing next week.”

I had to hunt the beast but it proved to be a bit tricky: the VR-01 was “losing hydraulic oil at a rate which has limited the number of laps one can achieve on each run”.

And then it happened: a lonely guy sat on the concrete floor on the pit wall with his lonely laptop, the garage door opened and Timo Glock exited the pits in the gorgeous – if ultimately slow – Virgin car. Even Yoko Ono’s gr8test “music” can’t compare to the sound of Cosworth V8 engine, I was ecstatic!

How quickly things change in Formula 1 – VR is no longer VR, it is now called Mayroosha; Glock is off to the DTM TNT; Nick Wirth is designing some weird stuff for architects and the British military; Lucas di Grassi is busy racing and testing silent cars.

Please now take a few milliseconds to enjoy my 2010 Virgin Racing @ Jerez picture gallery below.