Virgin shuts down prematurely

Virgin Racing is, of the four teams making their debut in Formula 1, the only one present this week in Jerez. It is therefore not unusual to see John Booth's team suffering from setbacks in Spain, while the top teams are doing one lap after another. In addition, Virgin Racing is carrying out its first "wind" tests here since Nick Wirth's teams developed the car entirely by computer using CAD (computer-aided design), without going through the wind tunnel stage. , used by other F1 teams. First pitfall this Thursday for Virgin, since the VR01 lost its front wing on the track, spreading some debris on the track which caused the red flag to appear after two hours of session.

The team not having a spare part, Timo Glock was unable to return to the track, causing the entire team to lose a precious day of testing. “ We encountered a problem fixing the fin, which caused us to lose it at the start of a run, comments Nick Wirth, technical director. The cause has been identified. Unfortunately we are missing one or two spare parts which we hope will arrive this evening. So we were not able to play the rest of the day. »

Due to the absence of wind tunnel work, Virgin was able to collect some important data at Jerez, despite the low number of laps completed. “ Despite the short time we had so far, we were encouraged by what we saw and were able to collect some vital aerodynamic data. We hope to resume our program Friday morning. »