Renault in Formula One under a British licence in , having raced as a French outfit since Renault took over in 2002. This left the sport without any team racing under a French licence for the first time since the season. Group Lotus had yet to purchase a stake in the team, but had an option to do so by the end of . Along with the launch of their new car, Lotus Renault GP announced that they had hired Jean Alesi as an ambassador for the team and test driver for the T125 single-seater project. On 6 February 2011, Robert Kubica was severely
High-speed rail in Italy for Trenitalia and 9.1 million for NTV, for a combined 64 million passengers. The first high-speed rail route in Italy, the "Direttissima", opened in 1977, connecting Rome with Florence. The top speed on the line was , giving an end-to-end journey time of about 90 minutes with an average speed of . This line used a 3 kV DC supply. High-speed service was introduced on the Rome-Milan line in 1988-89 with the ETR 450 "Pendolino" train, with a top speed of 250 km/h and cutting travel times from about 5 hours to 4. The prototype train ETR X 500 was