Jerez first 2014 test Test day one

Another man playing down the significance of early impressions is Renault engine chief Rob White, who argues the lack of running shows just how complicated integrating the new chassis and power units is.

"It is clear that the objectives for testing are to go through all the scenarios that are necessary to establish the basic functioning of the car," said White, whose engines will power Red Bull, Toro Rosso and Caterham this year.

"We would like to run lots of kilometres and the most recent activities at the factory have been to prepare all the necessary steps in order to do that.

"We are setting out our stall to run the car, not to spend the week in the garage. But it is extremely important to appreciate how much newness there is with these cars, and how much newness there is with these power units.

"The list of things to do is immense and we are not at the level of maturity we would be at this time of year normally, but that is kind of understood and expected."

Ferrari F1 2014

That state of affairs shouldn't be seen as worrying though, according to our technical guru GARY ANDERSON:

"It's no surprise to see the teams not up and running because every time you open the garage and fire up the car you will find something else you need to attend to.

"These cars with all the complex systems, wiring and cooling requirements are a nightmare in the early stages.

"This is what today is going to be about - getting the car out when you can, troubleshooting problems and encountering these initial breakdowns with the new technologies.

"Everything is electronically controlled but before you can write defaults into software that will react to problems. This was inevitable, so I wouldn't get too concerned about teams having problems today.

"They will be overcome. F1 cars last year were very complicated, but these are probably 10 times more complicated so there is a huge amount to learn."

Red Bull RB10 launch

Red Bull design genius Adrian Newey is addressing the media later this morning. He's already had a brief say on the 2014 technical regs, and it's fair to say he's not best pleased with the aerodynamic rules.

While, in the case of the front wing, that's because of performance implications - "the narrower wing means the endplate is in the worst possible place in front of the wheel" - he's in agreement with the majority of fans over the look of the new noses.

"They are ugly and ungainly," he said. "To me the aesthetics of a Formula 1 car are important.

"The car should look good, and not many owners of these noses could say they really love them."

Teams have been keen to stress just how difficult this opening day of testing is likely to be given the huge number of new processes, designs and layouts they have had to process.

As James Key, technical director at Toro Rosso explains:

"I think we will get a lot of red flags this week. There are a lot of unknowns and there is going to be stuff that completely catches you out of the blue.

"This week, for us, isn't a performance week, it's a reliability week.

"We have got this opportunity now to learn the management of the power unit, learn how well we manage it with the chassis, while the drivers can get a feel for how the car is behaving. We then have the gap to the Bahrain test where we can address a lot of that stuff."