Virgin buys Wirth, joins Mclaren for technical partnership

[marcush.]

They have really not failed to find any the traps and potholes on the road to success yet...poor Timo Glock who can consider his career as a heavy stone in free fall now...he can only hope for a Heidfeld/delarosa type of chance now two years in hopeless equipment...a third year with this hopeless team will ruin his reputation finally if there is even a car for next year...

[xpensive]

There you go marcush, while I consider Nick Wirth the biggest pot-hole of them all, F1 is an abyss away from sportscars.

[Pandamasque]

There you go marcush, while I consider Nick Wirth the biggest pot-hole of them all, F1 is an abyss away from sportscars.

Yeah right. Nick Wirth was dragging the team down. They gonna do so much better with a Russian TV comedian as the engineering director

[marcush.]

The bigger pothole would have been Anderson ,methinks.

Wirth has done a fair number of decent cars so I´m not convinced he´s the reason for all this not working out.
They have produced complete working cars .
They are NOT hopelessly slow compared to the hailed efforts of Gascoyne but with considerably less current F1 experience.
To me they failed big time with the hydraulics last year -which must be attributed to a big portion to x-trac and we don´t know who refused to open the suitcase with cash to solve these issues quicker.
To pull the plug completely now hints at the head of the fish who is to blame for it not to work.The decision seems completely mad and not realistic at this time of year.
It is entirely right to raise the pressure when targets are not met.
But even the announcement of aiming at Q2 this year was really more than romantic....you can burn down the house overnight but as we saw in the past how long it took serious works outfits to raise to the front ...Toyota ,Ford/Jaguar,BAR ...to climb up the order does not only take time but serious money as well and the right people on top

[xpensive]

Whatever, I think Branson had enough now, focussing on space-flights an deep-sea discovery instead, leaving the russians to go off the road by themselves, just like that Ukainian-Israerli did with Jordan, Schneider was it?

[marcush.]

realistically Wirth was the entry card for Booth into F1 ,thanks to the mosley connection.Mosleys gone now and the results are not coming...
Nobody protects this sorry outfit anymore .Branson is unlikely to find joy in this ...so the russians are taking over ...but I don´t see them on the grid next year maybe as stefan GP

[350matt]

One thing which is interesting is the proposed Merc back-end that's being touted as a solution is there's a ruling that prevents an engine supplier from feeding more than 3 teams, unless all the others agree to it.

Also with car that's 4 seconds or so off the pace you wouldn't bother with KERS until you're 1 second off the pace, the money can be far better spent elswhere

so if the current box / hydraulics etc is now reliable why not stick with it until 2013 as then its all change anyway?

[ESPImperium]

I think the reason that Wirth and Virgin went their own ways is that Nick wasnt wanting someone else to come in and take over the technichal direction of the aero department without him and his CFD facility and the use of a wind tunnel and a straight line test day.

I think wirth said, no this isnt an option and just walked as he posibly had a pride and honor issue. It basically saying he wasnt good enough for it.

Id be surprised if the MVR/02 isnt now used as a test bitch for what the MVR/03 is going to be. And if it brings some ideas they can react uppon for 2012 i think they should be able to keep up with Hispania, who arguably have more of a place on past and current form than Virgin.

Id not be surprised if the Virgin entry is being eyed up by potential buyers as the best blank slate in F1.

[munudeges]

Whatever, I think Branson had enough now, focussing on space-flights an deep-sea discovery instead, leaving the russians to go off the road by themselves, just like that Ukainian-Israerli did with Jordan, Schneider was it?

I don't know why he was interested or if he ever was. If you want to look at the stark contrast between outside companies knowing what they want to get out of Formula 1 and how to go about it then you only need to look at Red Bull. Branson clearly isn't willing to invest because he doesn't really know why Virgin should be involved.

[xpensive]

People like Branson tend to have big heads and an overinflated image of their own importance and input, why I'm afraid that he misinterpreted his modest contribution to the Brawn team two years ago, thinking this was easy made publicity?

[munudeges]

Frankly, I found Branson's involvement with Brawn terribly embarrassing and at times cringe-worthy.

[marcush.]

that xtrac thing is really old stuff as i understand -is it even quickshift?

[350matt]

it does full seamless shifts

[marcush.]

I don´t think Wirth would have bowed out under the right conditions.Now the situation is :the blame is laid entirely at his door .
If there was a mutual agreement to bring in Virgin expertise for the outside people it would have been not easy to see who is providing what .
I think Wirth was the scapegoat.

[munudeges]

Completely inevitable that Wirth was going to carry the can though. The car simply hasn't moved forwards aerodynamically and any sane engineer should know that while there is a ton of potential in CFD, and processing power is only going one way, the software just isn't up to the job yet and won't be for some time. It needs to be improved and calibrated with wind tunnel data and with on track data.

It was completely obvious to Gascoyne and Willis last year that they needed to do something about the Cosworth/Xtrac situation otherwise they were going to get sidetracked with a lot of silly issues that they didn't have the time or money to mess about with. As such Lotus went wholesale with Renault and Red Bull and HRT kept Cosworth but moved to Williams's gearbox.

Virgin are in danger of being eclipsed by HRT once they get their act together and that's just not acceptable. If they're going the wrong way then they need to change course now.