Marussia Virgin Racing team looking to change its name to Marussia – Formula 1 news
Marussia Virgin Racing team is looking to change its team’s name to Marussia, removing “Virgin” from its brand’s logo, at a Formula 1 Commission meeting that is scheduled to take place in Geneva this week.
News that VRT wants to have a name change has been in the media since quite a while now, with final decision regarding the name shift on-hold until all the teams meet at Geneva to give a go-ahead.
When VRT along with teams such as Renault and Lotus Renault GP initially proposed this idea, some teams like Ferrari had openly opposed it asking for a meeting where this matter be discussed and action taken in the interest of all teams.
Given the current scenario and amid fresh reports, it is expected that Lotus group name change is likely be approved at the Geneva meeting without any resistance. If this happens, the Lotus Renault team will only bear its Lotus logo and the current Lotus
team will be renamed Caterham for the next season.
Marussia, which is a Russian company, has been providing the major chunk of finances to the team up until now. Hence, from a financial point of view, it makes sense if the team wants to keep its Russian logo. Its decision to forego the Virgin part of the
logo is also justified as it has not been of monetary gain to the team. Despite that, the team has been bearing the Virgin logo and plans to partner with it in the upcoming season.
The only name change that has been rejected so far is the re-naming of Red Bull’s Renault engines to Infiniti. Throughout this season of Formula 1, we saw Red Bull featuring Nissan-owned luxury car’s name on the back of their rear wings. Renault team president
Carlos Ghosn has made it very clear that the team would not be shifting names as a marketing strategy.
“I don't think you can have a name artificially,” Ghosn said to SID, “If Renault supplies the technology you can't say that for marketing reasons we call it Infiniti.”
Let’s see how the Commission meeting at Geneva turns out and whether the name change actually gets materialised or not, we have yet to see.
It will also be interesting to see what new doors open for the teams following the name change, and how well do they cash this name shift in the next season.
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