John Booth, team principal of Virgin Racing, has announced the launch of a new driver development initiative, the Manor Racing GP3 team.

Manor GP3 is a new team entry for the GP3 Series, a single seater racing category making its debut in 2010 as a feeder series for the GP2 Series. It will run alongside the GP2 Championship with the inaugural race scheduled for the Spanish Grand Prix weekend of the 2010 F1 calendar.

John Booth's Manor Motorsport has achieved great success in Formula 3 and Formula Renault and played a major role in the development of several of today's greatest motor racing talents. F1 Champions Kimi Raikkonen and Lewis Hamilton both graduated from the John Booth 'school of excellence'.

In 2009 Manor Motorsport teamed up with Wirth Research to found the Manor Grand Prix Formula One team, now renamed Virgin Racing. Despite stepping up to motor sport's premier racing category and becoming a Formula One Team Principal, John Booth is unlikely to forget his roots. He is a Yorkshireman born and bred and has devoted the past two decades to nurturing the next breed of racing champions from his operational base near Sheffield. As thrilled as John is to be working with two drivers very much in the current spotlight, he is eager to maintain close links with grass-roots racing, having once occupied the cockpit of a single-seater race car himself in the formative stages of his motor sport career. A driver development programme was always part of the master plan in the formation of Virgin Racing.

The GP3 cars are a standardised, all-new Dallara chassis combined with a 280bhp Renault engine and with a 6-speed longitudinal sequential Hewland gearbox. Pirelli will supply tyres to the series and GP2 supplier Brembo will manufacture brakes.

John Booth: "Manor GP3 is a terrific opportunity for potential stars of the future to climb the Virgin Racing ladder. Our objective has been to achieve a budget for the series that is not only extremely competitive, but which also offers our drivers the added benefit of the Manor driver development blueprint and integration with the F1 team."

"In addition to receiving fantastic support from our highly experienced race team professionals, Manor GP3 will occupy the same race shop facilities as the Virgin Racing F1 team, have access to the simulator programme operated by Wirth Research, and run in support of European rounds of the 2010 Formula One calendar. The icing on the cake is the fantastic prize of an F1 test with Virgin Racing for the most successful Manor GP3 driver."