Virgin Racing - Virgin VR-01

The Virgin Racing team rolled out their first-ever F1 car, the VR-01, in an online event at virginracing.com on Wednesday. Team Principal John Booth, Designer Nick Wirth and Sir Richard Branson were just three of the team's top personnel to be present together with race drivers Timo GLock and Lucas id Grassi. The team has also contracted two test drivers, Alvaro Parente and Luiz Razia.

Virgin have in their first car made history, eschewing the traditional wind tunnel and model making route. Instead the car has been designed and its aerodynamics 'tested' entirely on computer. Whilst computer aided design has long been a core feature of all the F1 teams, none has completely stopped using wind tunnel testing in favour of sole use of computer simulation using a technique called Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD).

Mechanically the VR-01 uses the Cosworth V8 engine and an in-house gearbox although the internals are by xtrac - it is unclear if this is an Xtrac gearbox in a Virgin housing or a Virgin-original full gearbox design with components from Xtrac (if that makes sense). The team has stuck with industry standard components at the corners - BBS wheels, AP brake callipers, Hitco pads and discs and Penske dampers. As with the Williams the team has avoided the shark fin that has been adopted by most of the front-running teams, although there is of course scope for later introduction.

Timo Glock comes to the team out of necessity, his drive at Toyota coming to an abrupt and not entirely expected end when the team pulled out of F1 late last year. Glock has two full seasons with Toyota behind him plus four races with Jordan in 2004. Whilst he is undoubtably a very good driver, he has only occasionally shown flashes of Kubica-like speed and inspiration, although one can't deny that the car would have played a part in that. A good solid choice though by Virgin.

Lucas di Grassi on the other hand comes from three full seasons in GP2 where he managed second and two thirds in the championship. After an F1 test with Honda at the end of 2008 he spent 2009 as one of Renault's test drivers before landing his race seat with Virgin. He comes from GP2 with a solid reputation and will be looking to consolidate that - he can do no better than measure himself against Glock.

Although the Virgin name is new to F1 (barring last year's sponsorship of the Brawn GP team) the people at the sharp end of the team are far from it. Nick Wirth has previously worked for March, Leyton House, Benetton and for a couple of years ran his own F1 team, Simtek. John Booth has extensive experience of running race teams, having spent almost 20 years running Manor Motorsport in various formulae. The team should be aiming to finish ahead of the other new teams, given the sophistication of their approach and the fact that they will be the first new team to run at a pre-season test next week. The only question in the team's make-up is that dedication to 100% CDF design and development - can it pay off?

author: Phil Haigh