An utterly pointless set of numbers, but it's fun anyway

Well there you have it. Day 1 of F1 2014 and we have the first set of laptimes.

1. Kimi Raikkonen -Ferrari-Ferrari 1min 27.104secs

2. Lewis Hamilton -Mercedes-Mercedes 1min 27.802secs

3. Valtteri Bottas  -Williams-Mercedes 1min 30.082secs

4. Sergio Perez  -Force India-Mercedes 1min 33.161secs

5. Jean-Eric Vergne  -Toro Rosso-Renault 1min 36.530secs

6. Esteban Gutierrez  -Sauber-Ferrari 1min 42.257secs

7. Sebastian Vettel  -Red Bull-Renault No time

8. Marcus Ericsson  -Caterham-Renault No time

So, what does this tell us? Is that huge spread of times an indicator of what the 2014 season will look like? Are Ferrari about to dominate all others?

Of course not, these are probably the least relevant set of laptimes you'll ever see. Most teams just ran installation programmes and no one will have even scratched the dust on top of the surface of performance today.

Last year the fast times were around 8-10 seconds a lap faster than these, so just watch over the course of the next few days and the next two tests to see just how much the picture changes.

So the laptimes are irrelevant. We do know two thing though. 

1) Most of the cars look hideous (Torro Rosso, Force India and Caterham in particular), with some managing to look quite good (Red Bull, Mercedes & even Ferrari).

2) The sound is nothing like the screamers of the past. The Turbo era is definitely going to be a different show to what the F1 world is used to.

Stay tuned, the next few weeks will be interesting.