Tag Archives: virgin racing

How did the new teams do in the first race?

Bahrain played host to three brand new teams this year, Lotus, Virgin Racing and HRT Cosworth/Hispania Racing. After months of preparation it was their first taste of F1 proper with nothing to hide behind.
Lotus performed the best of the new teams, they had a seemingly problem free weekend with their cars both going on to almost finish the race – they were both classified as finishers though. They were off the pace and even got outqualified by one of the Virgin cars but the results happen on race day. Top marks for their effort though and as they were the last team to be granted their entry they have done a fantastic job, it shows what bringing in F1 experience can do.
Virgin Racing put on a reasonable show though neither car finished the race due to technical issues – one hydraulic related and one with gearshift problems. The car looked [...]

All the rookies of 2010, Senna, Hulkenberg, Petrov, di Grassi and Chandhok – what to expect?

The 2010 grid has five new drivers on it, that’s a lot for one season but there could have easily been more had US F1 made the grid. Nico Hulkenberg joins the Williams team, Vitaly Petrov joins Renault, Lucas di Grassi joins Virgin Racing and both Bruno Senna and Karun Chandhok join HRT Cosworth. Most of these come directly from GP2 with Nico Hulkenberg the reigning champion.
Nico Hulkenberg has risen to stardom very quickly showing a talent that Willi Webber says reminds him of a young Michael Schumacher (who was it who said the same about Vettel?) and took the GP2 title impressively in his first season, will he have a similarly explosive start to his F1 career? Petrov and di Grassi have been around in GP2 for much longer and have finally made the leap into F1. Both need to prove that they are capable of competing at this [...]

Four day view of the second test in Jerez, Jenson Button ends up top with McLaren

With the weather in Spain still damp for most of the test and the teams request for a warmer location turned down everyone knuckled down to see what they could get done. Their efforts were rewarded near the end of the test with some dry running, with the dry days being right at the end of the test we can’t really compare the drivers as some of them never really got a dry track to drive on.
Team wise though we see that Jenson Button and McLaren take the top spot but that surprisingly Renault have come from nowhere to post the second fastest time of the whole test, I don’t know how consistent these times are but that’s fast for the Jerez tests, that must give some encouragement to them. Sauber still show in the top three confirming that they might be a good bet for some points this year.
Red [...]

The fourth and final day in Jerez and Button and McLaren top the times

The final day in Jerez and Jenson Button put down his claim with the fastest lap of both the Jerez tests, underlining that this year is not going to be easy for Lewis Hamilton at McLaren and that he intends to defend his title.
Sauber again take one of the top spots re-enforcing the pace that they have shown so far through the tests, we should expect some good grand prix from them this season. Renault will also be pleased to have rounded off the test with a good time.
Red Bull and Williams will be disapointed to be that far down the times given their performance on previous days but then perhaps they weren’t going for it today.
Virgin will feel that they got another one over on Lotus today though they have still to put significant mileage on their car whereas Lotus racked up the most laps of anyone today [...]