22/12/2011
NEWS STORY
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Ever since it burst on to the scenes with Richard Branson and an arm or two full of Virgin girls I've had something of a soft spot for the team which carried the billionaires' legendary company moniker. The frustrated engineer in me admired and marvelled at the digital-only approach; the accountant in me was tempted by the cost saving potential; the journalist in me has never really understood any of it.
And that's the problem. Two years into its life and the team is still a mystery. The teams around it have shown clear direction, or have shown some sort of progression, but not Virgin. It has been cemented to the rear of the grid, battling the likes of Hispania, and that is just plain wrong.
The team developed a new car for 2011, it tested that new car - both of those things are advantages over its Spanish rival - yet it's not been enough, has it? I know full well that if I look John Booth in the eye he'll admit that it's not, and perhaps that's why I like the team. It's trying, it just isn't succeeding, and it's always a nice story when the underdog succeeds.
Why isn't it succeeding, or even making progress? Part of the reason was the Nick Wirth led digital-only approach. At the tail end of last season I sat down with Wirth and discussed the benefits of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and he spoke enthusiastically of its potential. That may still be there waiting to be unlocked or perhaps waiting for the technology but Virgin can't wait any longer. It's been chaste for too long - it craves success, it needs it if it's to survive, and so Wirth parted ways with the team after the Monaco Grand Prix. It was not the first time he's left the sport, the ill-fated Simtek team never reappeared after the Monaco race in 1995. Ironic, really.
That announcement back in May was a statement for the future then. It was admission that Virgin Racing has fallen well short of the expectation that not only the world had of it, but which it had of itself. Probably, more to the point, it was an admission that the expectations in Russia weren't being met, considering the team had taken on more investment from the Marussia car company at the tail end of 2010. So much so that come 2012 there will be no Virgin Racing as it becomes known simply as Marussia.
In reality the 2011 season was more about survival than anything else. Once Wirth had gone focus, perhaps rightly so, turned to 2012. The 2011 season was a write off, more or less, with the car bereft of downforce and the drivers doing their all for scant reward.
Neither driver had even the remotest hope of producing a notable result, though if one wanted to be especially harsh it could be argued that both failed to take advantage of the conditions in Canada - Hispania claimed thirteenth spot on that sodden Sunday in Montreal, enough to secure the team the all-important eleventh place in the final championship standings, and leaving Virgin splashing about with David Coulthard's red-shouldered blackbirds.
Virgin is therefore officially the worst team in Formula One. It has been these last two seasons and, as I wrote at the beginning of the season, that simply has to change. Investors are not interested in doing business with an entity which is not successful. Success breeds success, and while Jim Wright, Marketing Director at Virgin, tells us that the team's finances are built through business-to-business relationships rather than traditional investment, Formula One is an especially fickle business and if you're not winning you're losing. The maths is comparatively simple in that respect.
Pre-season I set the team the target of making it through to Q2 on pace, and perhaps steal a point if the wind was in its favour. Neither of these happened which means that to me 2011 was a disappointing year from Virgin, carrying on from an equally disappointing 2010. That shouldn't have happened, and in 2012 it simply cannot continue. No team can afford to languish at the wrong end of the timesheets because eventually they drop off the bottom; Larrousse, Forti, Simtek...
A lot needs to change then, and perhaps that first step in the right direction - taking a more traditional approach to car design. The team now has Pat Symonds on board. He's been with the team throughout 2011 and was taken on as a consultant to find areas where the team could improve. His part in Wirth's demise is left for us to speculate over but that change in technical direction may be just what's needed.
Strangely, I have confidence in John Booth. Most in sport will go to the top man and oust him the moment things look bleak, but I don't think Booth is the problem. Perhaps it's because he is a racer through and through and the sort that calls a spade a spade - the sort of team principal you could sit in a bar and have a pint with. To me he's evidence that even today the grafters of the world can get to the top - just like Frank William's did in his day, or any of the old 'Garagistes'. He's a link to the grass-roots motor sport we all started out in, that anchor back to reality.
For Virgin though there won't be a golden bullet. There will be no instant turnaround of fortunes, instead the team has to make ground rather than continue to concede it. Virgin's 2011 makes it difficult for me to decide if HRT went forward, or Virgin went backwards, and that really is as bad as it gets.
I hope one day I can come back and eat these words. If I do and you're reading John, I wouldn't mind a pint of John Smith's Cask to wash them down.