Virgin Launch MVR-02 in London
Virgin Racing has launched their new car which will be a challenger in the 2011 season. The car was revealed in a ceremony held at the BBC Television Center in London on Monday. The ceremony was attended by both drivers, team officials and media.
The new car is to be called MVR-02 where ‘M’ represents new partner Marussia. The car does not have Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems (KERS) because the team had previously announced that they will not be using this technology, although it is legal this year.
Virgin Used VR-01 in Valencia tests to give their drivers some mileage and also to check the Pirelli tyres for heat and weight distribution. Jerome D’Ambrosio and Timo Glock drove the car for 219 laps collectively to give team engineers enough readings on
the new Pirelli tyres.
Virgin made its debut last season and both their drivers, Timo Glock and Lucas Di Grassi, were unable to score any points on the table. This season De Grassi is replaced by D’Ambrosio after he impressed in Fridays testing.
New Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) rules have come into play, which means that Virgin drivers will have to complete the qualifiers within 107 percent of the fastest time or they do not qualify to race in the Grand Prix.
Virgin Racing has also made some changes off the track and hired Graeme Lowdon as team president and sporting director. Nikolay Fomenko, president of Marussia, becomes engineering director and Andy Webb, Marussia's managing director, becomes chief executive
of Virgin Racing. Recently Virgin Racing has penned an agreement with Quantel, which assists in motion pictures and video production. The QNET logo will be on Timo Glock and Jerome D’Ambrosio’s outfits as well as on the car.
The only two teams remaining to unveil their new cars are HRT and Force India. Force India will be revealing their car on Tuesday and HRT will be revealing their car in Bahrain.
This season, Virgin’s main rivalry will be with the HRT and Lotus team. All these teams were rookies last season but Team Lotus has now upgraded to a Renault machine. It seems that Virgin will be catching up for most part of the 2011 season.
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