MotoGP racing star Valentino Rossi has ventured from two wheels to four a few times in the past, and he’s always come away smiling when given the chance to strut his stuff on a Formula One track. This latest testing session, though, has left many highly impressed and others understandably worried.

Various reports have put Yamaha’s star rider into the Ducati paddock come 2011 or so, but after registering times around the Mugello circuit in an F2008 racer that were just two-tenths of a second behind Kimi Raikkonen’s outright lap record of 1:21.67 (set in the same car, for what it’s worth), Yamaha team manager Davide Brivio said, “The greatest danger is Ferrari.

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News of an impending hybrid from Ferrari is nothing new, but now we appear to have an actual date when the Italian supercar manufacturer plans to show such a vehicle in an official setting. And it’s coming soon, during the first week of March at the Geneva Motor Show, says Ferrari CEO Luca di Montezemolo.

The announcement came during the unveiling of Ferrari’s new F10 Formula One car, which seems appropriate as it was during the 2009 F1 season when Ferrari first began using its Kinetic Energy Recovery System - a kind of hybrid technology that captures energy normally lost to braking in a flywheel - in actual competition… with mixed results, of course.

We can’t say for sure what kind of hybrid setup Ferrari will show off in its 599 super hybrid, but something similar in principle to the race-bred KERS seems like a distinct possibility, and we know the automaker has been dabbling in all-wheel-drive hybrids as well. In any case, Ferrari promises a production hybrid vehicle in the near future.

With nearly all the seats accounted for and the first group test at Valencia (scheduled for February 1) fast approaching, the time has come once again, boys and girls, for the unveiling of the 2010 F1 cars.

A couple of months ago, it looked like all the teams would get together under the auspices of the Formula One Teams Association to unveil their cars in one massive exposition concurrent with the Valencia test session, but that won’t come to fruition. Several teams are expected to debut there still, while others are doing their own thing once again. And Ferrari is first among them.

Unveiled at the team’s headquarters in Maranello, the new F10 is the chariot with which Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa will be contending for the championship against other top-rated challengers from Mercedes GP, McLaren and Red Bull, to say nothing of the other ten teams on the grid. The latest Prancing Horse - whose Santander-dominated red and white livery we saw a few days ago - is the product of several months of development, as the Scuderia stopped development of last year’s car half-way through the season after realizing it was way off pace and concentrated on this year’s car instead.

You can have a look at the initial batch of photos in the gallery below, but don’t expect to see much of the rear end of the car. Ferrari kept its diffuser design - of the double design that caused controversy last year but won’t be banned until next - hidden from prying eyes for the time being. Stay tuned for the more as the teams roll out their latest.

A Ferrari fell from a delivery truck.

Car price guide Parker’s has produced its latest depreciation lists for cars in the UK. It’s probably of most use if you’re shopping at the lower-priced end of the car spectrum, since a straight-up comparison would be pointless. Seven of the 10 cars with the least depreciation are Japanese, headed by the Honda Jazz, and all of them are small. Five of the 10 cars with the greatest depreciation, headed by the Maybach 57S, are English, and none of them are cheap.

Ferrari’s 2010 Formula One car won’t be officially revealed by the team until January 28, but a quick preview of the new car’s livery was provided by Fernando Alonso during a test at Circuit Paul Ricard. Spanish bank Santander, which followed Alonso from McLaren to Renault to Ferrari, is making the most of its time with the most famous marque in motorsports.

The Santander logo has replaced the bar code graphic that adorned the airbox and rear wing last year, the Shell logos on the front wings, and the Ferrari shields on the bodywork behind the front wheels. Combined with the new Ferrari overalls, no one will be able to forget who’s bringing the cash to the scuderia.

Paolo Martin knows Ferraris. Having worked for several decades as a designer for Pininfarina - the design house of choice for Maranello - he’s styled several Prancing Horse design studies. One of his most iconic designs was the Ferrari Modulo concept, unveiled at the 1970 Geneva Motor Show.

Based on the chassis from a homologated Ferrari 512 S racing car, the Modulo was the absolute cutting edge of space-age design. It was far too radical to ever see production, of course, but its design has endured as one of the most exceptional of its era.

Now, in a rather unique move, Martin has revisited his concept, re-interpreting the theme in a more contemporary design. Theoretically based on a Ferrari Enzo chassis, the “nuovo Modulo” looks as radical now as the original did in its day.

At the end of the two days of the test sessions with Valentino Rossi on the Montmelò circuit, he had more than 600 kilometres on the clock. After todays wet opening, just like yesterday, which complicated the start, the test dedicated to the Champion from Tavullia with the F2008, provided by Maranellos F1 Clienti department, was concluded with great results to the utmost satisfaction of the team