Formula One's newest teams brace themselves for the future
With the Formula One summer hiatus over, the newest teams to join the Formula One grid are starting to feel the pressure as they gear up for the last seven races of the season before the winners of the Driver’s Championship and Constructors Championship are named.
Technical director at Virgin Racing Nick Wirth doesn’t see a first place finish in the Constructor’s Championship at this stage in the season, but believes the team is still capable of finishing in 10th place so that is what they're aiming for.
With their best race finish of 14th thanks to Lucas di Grassi at the Malaysian Grand Prix, Virgin is currently in 12th place in the championship. Because points are only awarded to the top 10 finishes, those cars who are outside this group are ranked based on best finish.
“We need that 12th place because our competitors were able to take advantage of circumstances earlier in the season and get some results,” Wirth said in a recent interview with AUTOSPORT.
Virgin is new team on the Formula One grid, and fellow debut teams Lotus and Hispania Racing Team occupy the 10th and 11th spots because Heikki Kovalainen at Lotus scored a best of 13th in Australia, and Karun Chanhok at HRT has two 14th place finishes.
Virgin is in a position to become the best of the new teams thanks to Timo Glock, who had the best qualifying time of the new teams at the Hungarian Grand Prix. Lotus technical chief has already said the team has moved their focus to next year’s car, potentially giving Virgin even more of chance to be the best of the newest as they continue to develop their 2010 car.
“We switched our focus to development [as opposed to reliability troubleshooting] in the second half of this year and we've got to keep the learning curve going,” Wirth said. "We'll see whether Lotus stops develops. We've got our plan, and every team up and down the pit-lane is working hard. I'm sure that in light of the wing controversy that's going around at the moment, people are going to have to re-evaluate what they are doing on their cars for the second half of next year and indeed next year's car.”
Virgin’s stumbling block is that the car cannot generate enough downforce to contend during a rain-hit event, and says they require a race of attrition to achieve a strong finish.
“It would be way too optimistic of us to assume that we will do that just because of a wet track, despite the massive talents of both of our drivers and particularly Timo Glock's experience."
Bruno Senna, driver at HRT, isn’t sure what lies ahead for the team who are suffering from financial difficulties that have hindered the teams development plans for his car.
“We are able to keep the team running through the end of the year. But we can not be like Red Bull, which always has little or big things in the car every weekend,” Senna told Brazilian papers in a news conference Monday. “Few teams are guaranteed to be on the grid next year. Formula 1 is not easy. The Hispania and other teams can’t give that guarantee."
Like Lotus and Virgin, HRT made their Formula One debut last year. Though they were backed by Spanish businessman Jose Ramon Carabante, maintaining a Formula One team is expensive, and grooming one to win is even more costly and right now the team’s lack of resources not only threatens their championship chances this year but their entire future in the elite sport.
Senna signed with HRT a few months ago when there was no sign of the difficulties the team is facing today. The Brazilian driver was aware that joining a new team had its risks but things have drastically gone downhill since then.
While the future of the newest Formula One teams hangs in the balance, only the final races of the season will reveal which teams prosper, and which, if any, will still be around to compete next year.
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