Welcome to F1Minute - Vitaly Petrov replaces Jarno Trulli at Caterham for 2012.

Caterham F1 have announced that former Renault driver Vitaly Petrov will replace Jarno Trulli for the coming season. There’s been speculation over the replacement of Trulli for several weeks, but the Italian has been adamant that his contract was secure. Today, however, it’s all change at Caterham, with the Russian Petrov coming in to partner Heikki Kovalainen in 2012.

Speaking of the deal, Petrov says: “This is a very exciting day for me. I’ve been training hard all winter and am ready to get back into the cockpit and go to work. From what I’ve seen already, our new car is another good step forward from 2011 and now I cannot wait to see how it feels when we get to Barcelona.”

Meanwhile, Trulli has said: “Personally, I’m not displeased. I was prepared for a possible divorce from Caterham in the knowledge that difficult economic circumstances would push the team to find an adequately-supported driver.”

Which is not what he said four days ago, when Autosport interviewed him about his 2012 seat and he said: “We are safe, yes.”

Welcome to F1Minute - Pirelli name first compounds for opening races.

Pirelli have announced their tyre compound choices for the first three rounds of the 2012 season, with Australia kicking things off using the soft and mediums. The second race in Malaysia will be medium and hards, whilst the racing in China will go back to the same choice as Melbourne - soft and mediums.

The compounds are just one step apart, which differs from last year, where all three events used the hard and soft compound - two steps apart.

Following their first round of testing in Jerez, Pirelli’s motorsport boss Paul Hembery was happy with how the new rubber was performing. He said: “We know the warm-up is better on the medium and hard tyres, which was a criticism we had last year - getting the tyres into the right temperature, particularly for some of the cars in the mid grid who had less downforce.”

Talking about the tyres as a whole, he added: “The drivers are all generally talking about having the cars well balanced, and I think part of that is the fact they’ve been able to understand the tyres better... The overall feedback has been very positive.”

This is F1Minute - Bianchi puts the brakes on Force India testing.

Jules Bianchi became the first major casualty at Jerez this morning, during the third day of testing. We’ve seen some trips into the gravel, but the Force India reserve driver went further, spinning into the tyre barrier. The damage wasn’t too great, although the car did have to be winched up and hauled away by tractor.

It put a halt to the team’s running though, as they needed replacement parts to come over from their UK base. The accident stopped Bianchi during his second half day of testing, after a more successful run yesterday afternoon. It also put pay to Nico Hülkenberg’s first stint behind the wheel, as he was due to take over testing duties after lunch. Instead, he will have to wait until tomorrow.

Bianchi apologised for the crash, saying: “I made a small mistake on my second run. The tyres were a bit cold and I spun into the gravel and touched the wall with the rear wheel. I’m very sorry because my mistake has cost the team a lot of time and effort.”

It’s also probably upset the Hülk, and you won’t like him when he’s angry.