McLaren deal has Virgin switching track ahead of Silverstone weekend

VirgIn Racing are to concentrate the majority of their resources for the remainder of the season on developing a car for 2012 that will help them belatedly achieve their targets.

The Yorkshire team’s protracted negotiations over their new technical partnership with Formula 1 powerhouse McLaren may have strengthened their hand long term, but it has meant a serious readjustment of their goals for 2011.

Russian paymasters Marussia Motorsport came on board at the start of the year demanding the Dinnington team be regulars in the second session of Saturday qualifying by mid-season.

With Virgin considerably more reliable than last year but still down on pace, that is looking increasingly unlikely, and with the team staying true to their principles of operating within a sustainable budget, their finances – believed to be around £55m a year – are to be re-directed into next season.

The use of McLaren technologies, including wind-tunnel testing, will be of a significant help in achieving their long-term ambitions.

But in the short term, the six weeks spent thrashing out the McLaren deal has had an impact on development for the current campaign.

A planned performance upgrade for Silverstone incorporating a modified floor, new engine cover, new side pods and gearbox coverings designed at tidying the airflow has been shelved.

That will not be implemented until the Singapore Grand Prix, in five races time at the end of September.

Instead, Virgin anticipate the teams they are chasing will come back to them this weekend.

The new engine regulations imposed on teams at Silverstone restrict the blowing of gases through the rear diffuser while the driver is off the throttle.

Virgin team principal John Booth said: “Hopefully the new regulations will be our biggest update of the season in that it brings the other teams closer to us.

“We didn’t pursue the diffuser technology in the first place so it doesn’t affect us.

“It became obvious before we were in a position to start pursuing it that the FIA would implement the ban at some stage and we had the first part of that last week at Valencia with the limited amount of programmes you could put in between qualifying and race. Now they’ve banned it altogether for Silverstone, and the teams who are using it seem to think it’s going to cost them four tenths of a second.

“It’ll make no difference to the order of the cars, but it gives us a chance to narrow the gap and takes the pressure off qualifying so we can spend the whole of free practice planning for race distances.

“The internal political wranglings over the last six weeks have delayed things by a few weeks so our upgrade will now be introduced in Singapore.

“We’ve shielded the team from the discussions but as far as the development programme goes it has been a little bit disruptive.”

Going into their home grand prix though, when the opportunity for commercial networking and showcasing of professional attitudes is as important as the 90 minutes of racing, Booth is confident his team will rise to the challenge despite their inability to catch up in the pitlane.

He said: “Our engineers have done a brilliant job in optimising the package we have. Valencia was a real sign that we were getting the most out of the car.

“I know in qualifying the Lotus is still a bit in front of us, but the race pace is pretty close. We finished just seven seconds behind Jarno Trulli in Valencia.

“We’re hoping with the new engine regulations we might be able to get a little bit closer and give them a bit of a race.

“Mechanically we’ve had a great car this year. We just don’t have the downforce efficiency required to be any more competitive than we were last year.”

The overall aim of Virgin now is to be competitive in 2012.

If year one was a learning curve, year two is fast becoming a season in which they stabilise their reliability, making year three the time to push on.

“Our targets have been pushed back 12 months,” conceded Booth, who revealed the design process for next year’s car is already a month old.

“At the start of this year we intended to be in Q2. That is still our target but is looking less and less likely.

“That target now moves to 2012 and the ultimate goal remains to be fighting for a podium place in Sochi in 2014, that’s still (Marussia president) Nikolay Fomenko’s dream.

“The main objective is to develop the 2012 car, there may be some spin off towards the end of the year which would be great but we have to put the majority of our efforts into 2012. If we spent an extra £10m over the next few months and develop this car to within an inch of its life we’d move to where Lotus is. But there seems little point in that.

“We need to make a much bigger leap than that so it’s more important to put our resources and money into the 2012 car where there’s much better chance of achieving that.

“Marussia have been fully on board with discussions and planning. Nikolay is patient and appreciates the task we have taken on. He has shown a lot of support for the team.”

Despite the McLaren partnership and the Marussia investment, Virgin’s budget has not increased dramatically. They began their debut season on £40m a year and are now closer to £55m but that is still a figure dwarfed by the established works teams.

“Our plan has always been to have a sustainable budget,” said Booth.

“We’re not Ferrari. We’ve had to be pretty cute with how we conduct the McLaren business.

“Negotiations are ongoing with regards resource restrictions throughout Formula 1 but I can never see Red Bull, Ferrari, McLaren spending £55m.

“We cannot go into the market place and raise that money so we have to go out and achieve what we can on what we have.

“I think it’s realistic to achieve what we hope to in 2012 and the McLaren deal gives us quite a big leg up.”

DINNINGTON DAYS NUMBERED FOR F1 TEAM

A stroll around the Virgin garage at Dinnington is enough to set pulses racing ahead of this weekend’s British Grand Prix, writes Nick Westby.

For a Formula 1 team to be housed in such an impressive facility here in Yorkshire is a source of much pride for the county, and John Booth’s team have generated a lot of interest throughout the White Rose during their venture into sport’s fast lane.

Yet the reality of Formula 1 is that big is better. Virgin’s announcement this week that they are building a new purpose-built facility following the agreement of a technical partnership with Surrey-based McLaren, means their future more than likely lies away from the former Rotherham pit village.

The team already splits its time between Dinnington and its newly-acquired offices at Wirth Research in Banbury, Oxfordshire, and former Rotherham butcher and single-seat driver Booth yesterday acknowledged that the reality is the team is outgrowing its spiritual home.

“This space has worked fantastically well for us and we probably got our trucks to Silverstone quicker than McLaren did from Surrey,” said team principal Booth, who moved his Manor Motorsport team to Dinnington in the early 2000s.

“In the next couple of months we will start looking for a new home. I guess it’ll be somewhere between Dinnington and Oxford.

“This isn’t big enough for us, we’ll have to move from here, we have outgrown it.

“We could move to Sheffield because there are some great technologies happening there, world leading technologies, and I’ll be pushing for staying in Yorkshire.

“The people working here now would love us to stay. My heart will pull us here and hopefully my head will.

“But we are and will be a very big company and there will be hard decisions to make.”