Virgin Racing focus remains the same – to get over finishing line

The Dinnington-based team, born out of Booth's Manor Motorsport operation, have crossed the finish line only once in their first four grands prix and have fallen behind Lotus in the race to become the top debutants in 2010.

A welter of reliability issues peaked ahead of the Australian Grand Prix with the revelation that their fuel tank was not big enough to get drivers Timo Glock and Lucas Di Grassi to the finish line.

And even in the three weeks since the last race in Shanghai, during which time they hoped to fully address the situation, their tireless endeavours were undermined by the volcanic ash travel chaos which exiled them in China for five days.

They begin free practice at the Circuit de Catalunya near Barcelona today having only been able to equip Glock's car with the larger fuel tank.

But Booth is confident his team are beginning to break the back of their reliability issues and that Spain, and the start of the European season, will bring better fortune for the team.

"Spain is a chance to kickstart our season," said Booth, whose side have enjoyed better qualifying sessions than Lotus but have not finished as many races as their fellow Formula 1 newcomers. "We arrived here full of optimism for the next phase of our debut season. We accept that we are not fast enough but we are making real progress.

"The short-term goal remains to get both cars to the finish, and nothing else crosses our mind until we achieve that goal.

"Reliability remains the priority for us."

Despite a limited time frame to modify the cars when they belatedly returned from China, Booth and the team made a number of significant modifications to the performance of the VR-01's.

The fuel tank cost considerably less than first estimates of 1m and although Di Grassi must try to emulate his achievement in finishing the Malaysian Grand Prix on a reduced fuel capacity, Booth is positive the Brazilian will have the same opportunity as Glock in two races from now.

"We're helped by the fact that it's Monaco next week because that's the shortest race and therefore the circuit that requires the least amount of fuel consumption," he said. "By Turkey two weeks later we will have modified his car.

"What we've done to Timo's car is build a longer chassis to fit the fuel tank into, and that enables us to get to race distance.

"Plus we've added a new aerodynamic package and have also put a lot of work in on the gearboxes for both cars, just basically hoping to increase our reliability.

"There's various different components to rebuilding a chassis and in the end the fuel tank issue probably cost somewhere between 500,000 and 700,000.

"But in a situation like that it's a case of 'forget about the cost, just get it fixed'."