Pressure rises as Virgin attempt to close the gap on their closest rivals

Virgin Racing may have been boosted for their second campaign by the financial support of Russian sports car manufacturer Marussia, but the harsh reality of the most lavish sport in the world is that if your pockets have a bottom, you have no chance.

Virgin struggled along on a budget of £40m in their debut season. That budget has been swelled considerably by Marussia’s investment, to the tune of an estimated £10m, yet is still a fraction of the war chests that established works teams like Ferrari, McLaren and Mercedes have at their disposal.

The team may still go by the name of Sir Richard Branson’s empire, but the entrepreneur is taking an increasingly peripheral role and with his financial commitment thought to be contracted only to the end of 2012, the Russian influence is growing.

Booth – the man at the heart of the operation having provided the engine room of the team – is under no illusions as to the size of the task he faces as team principal in delivering on a collective goal of a regular berth in the second session of Saturday qualifying by mid-season.

He is also aware his Russian paymasters will not hesitate in making a change should that objective prove beyond them, no matter the constant upgrading of the team’s base at Dinnington, where his F1 dream became a reality nearly two years ago.

So it is with a heavy heart that he has had to confess on the eve of the season that the cars Timo Glock and Jerome d’Ambrosio are to drive will not be up to the pace in the first three races of the season.

Despite the team’s growth, funds remain limited and a decision had to be made between reliability and pace.

Haunted by the struggles of their fiery baptism last year, when it was revealed their initial fuel tank design was not big enough to complete race distance, Virgin have opted for reliability – to walk before they can run.

“We are not quite where we want to be pace-wise,” Booth admitted to the Yorkshire Post, before boarding a plane to Melbourne for this weekend’s Australian Grand Prix.

“We are still limited in terms of resources to the rest of the teams and quite honestly had to prioritise either reliability or pace.

“So reliability was what we concentrated on. We didn’t want to suffer the same as last year where we struggled through the first half of the year.

“Last year we pushed too soon on car performance and it cost us in reliability as a result.

“This year we arrived in Melbourne with nearly 4,800kms of pre-season testing under our belts and a much more reliable baseline to develop from.

“I’m comfortable that prioritising reliability and strategy will help our big picture and we’ll be in a much better place for the rest of the season.

“The first three races are going to be tough for us to make any progress. We can hope for rain in Malaysia again like last year which helped us get into Q2, and with greater reliability we believe if that were to happen again we’d have a better platform on which to take advantage of the situation, where last year we didn’t.

“But it’s not going to be easy those first three races.”

The pre-season testing numbers do not make good reading for Virgin fans.

In Barcelona they were five seconds off the pace and four seconds behind Lotus, who were their big rivals last year and are aided this term by a Renault engine and Red Bull transmission.

The figures in Jerez were more positive. Virgin were 2.3 seconds off the fastest car and forced their way in between the Lotus drivers, which suggests that once they do get their act together, closing the gap on the middle of the field may be within their grasp.

By the time the start of the European section dawns in Turkey on May 8, Virgin hope to be in a position to turn that glimmer of pace into a more common occurence, provided the teams they are chasing at the back of the grid have not raced away from them at the Australian, Malaysian and Chinese grands prix.

“We’ve got a major upgrade for Turkey – exhaust, nose and front wing,” continued Booth, who acknowledged that while every team will arrive in Istanbul with an upgrade, theirs will be more significant because of what they have been forced to sacrifice in the opening three fly-away races.

“In an ideal world we’d have had that upgrade in place for the final Barcelona test and the start of the season. But the truth is we don’t have the resources for that.

“We are still building our team and where the established teams have 200 mechanics back at the factory working on upgrades while the cars are away, we only have 15 to 20 people.

“Testing in Barcelona is always a struggle for us. It’s a bumpy track and we were off the pace. And unfortunately we had a patchy last day with an engine problem.

“Plus we didn’t have Timo (appendicitis) for that second spell so it was asking a lot of Jerome.

“Jerez, though, gave us a lot of encouragement. We clocked 4,642km and the knowledge we gleened from that was invaluable.”

The task of finding those precious few seconds lies with Nick Wirth, Virgin’s technical director.

A self-confessed mechanical geek, Wirth has stayed true to his radical testing methods of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) over conventional wind tunnel methods, and it has been his job over the winter to make the MVR-02 more aerodynamic, and therefore more competitive.

Wirth said: “We saw we were one and a half to two seconds of pure speed away from being able to get into Q2 last season, and that is what we have tried to find this winter so we can give our drivers the best possible chance of fighting their way into Q2 on a regular basis.

“With drivers of the quality we have, and the teamwork, once you’re in that position history tells you that you then stand a reasonable chance of picking up your first point, and that’s when things get interesting.

“Our first and foremost objective is to try to beat the teams that joined with us last year – but we want to go beyond that.”

Such a sobering debut year, when they were constantly three to four seconds a lap off the pace, has given the team a sense that a point needs to be proved in 2011.

The fuel-tank gaffe left them with egg on their faces, and Wirth’s radical CFD concept – while greener and more cost effective – remains an alien concept within F1, where the quickest route to success is chased with the most bucks.

Wirth believes it will eventually bear fruit, and Booth and the team remain 100 per cent committed to his principles.

Wirth said: “We want to right the wrongs of last year. It’s the excitement of seeing us achieve that I’m looking forward to.

“I know what a big step forward our 2011 car is. I very much look forward to the day when everyone realises what we have achieved when we make our first major impact.

“But it’s more than that; there is such a bigger picture going on here, with regard to the wider industry and our work in commercial development.

“The miracle of what we’re doing is the process.”

Despite the early-season handicap and the odds being stacked heavily against them, Booth, a former butcher, from Rotherham, is relishing the challenge rather than shirking the responsibility.

He openly admits the difference in his team from their debut 12 months ago to their mindset now is like ‘night and day’ given the progress such harsh lessons have afforded them.

But Booth, 54, is at last in a position to enjoy the dream he built.

“I didn’t have time to worry about or get excited about the daunting prospect of Formula 1 last year,” said Booth.

“We can now be excited about it, and for me, it is still a great honour and I, and all of us, want to make the most of it.

“That’s why Q2 by mid-season remains the minimum target. If we fall short we have failed badly.

“But everyone in the team is very positive. Timo is now 100 per cent after his appendicitis and cannot wait to get cracking. And Jerome is absolutely cock-a-hoop. He still can’t believe he’s in this position – and he’s looked good in testing.”