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Much will be made this season of the incredible strength in depth of the Formula 1 field in 2012, with six world champions all taking part, each one of them with a justifiable claim to being an all-time great.

But when the season kicks off in Melbourne on 18 March, there will be a man sitting at home in Europe who could make that line-up even stronger.

Robert Kubica might well have been starting this year's Australian Grand Prix grid in a Ferrari had he not suffered the horrendous rallying accident that prevented him racing for Renault in 2011.

As it is, he is in a no-man's land, not knowing whether he will ever be able to drive an F1 car in anger again.

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Formula 1 2012 effectively starts now. The first race is not until 18 March, but by the end of this week the world will have seen two of the cars expected to be competing at the front - and one of them will have had its first run on the track.

The McLaren breaks cover first, with a launch at the team’s base in Woking, Surrey, before Ferrari reveal their new challenger in Maranello on Friday.

Ferrari plan, weather permitting, to run the car briefly at their Fiorano test track on Saturday ahead of the start of pre-season testing in Jerez, Spain, on 7 February.

On Sunday, the new Lotus (formerly Renault) will be unveiled on the internet – and F1 designers and engineers across Europe will be losing sleep about what they will see when the new Red Bull breaks cover in the same fashion on Monday.

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Bruno Senna describes as "the start of my Formula 1 career for real". It is a date that could have come three years previously, had events turned out slightly differently.

In the winter of 2008-9, the nephew of the Formula 1 legend Ayrton Senna was after impressing in a test alongside Jenson Button.

But then , team principal Ross Brawn was forced to spend the winter desperately trying to save the team, and when he did so at the 11th hour, he thought it better, given the circumstances, to stick with the experience of Rubens Barrichello rather than the promise he had seen in the younger Brazilian.

Now the wheel has turned full circle, and it is . But it has been a long time coming.

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Fresh doubts have emerged about the viability of this year's Bahrain Grand Prix after a human rights group in the Gulf kingdom called on the Formula 1 teams to boycott the race in the wake of continuing civil unrest.

It is the first public intervention by an interested party on the subject of the wisdom of holding the race since F1's governing body the

Bahrain's inclusion on the official schedule raised eyebrows. That's because unrest continues there, despite pledges by the ruling royal family to increase human rights and democratic representation in an attempt to move on from the disturbances that led to the cancellation of last year's race.

The call for a boycott - by the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights (BCHR) - became public two days after police were accused of beating a leading opposition activist on the back, neck and head at a rally on Friday.

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Formula 1 always goes a little quiet over Christmas, but one team that has been making waves - both publicly and behind the scenes - are Williams.

The team that dominated F1 for much of the 1980s and 1990s are one of only two outfits still with an obvious vacancy in their driver line-up - the other being back-of-the-grid HRT.

And it seems that Rubens Barrichello, the veteran who has driven for the team for the last two seasons, is back in with a chance of staying with them for 2012.

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