Will Virgin close the gap on Lotus in 2012?

[Polarbear]

Hi all,

Just wondering how bright we think the future is for Marussia Virgin Racing?

As i understand it, they have signed a long term deal with McLaren, and will be moving all their team under one roof at the end of the season...do we think these changes will be enough for them to close the gap on the Norfolk-Lotuses?

[Javert]

Will Virgin finish above HRT (!!!) in the ranking some year ?

[Polarbear]

I think the rankings do not reflect the true picture at the back of the grid...HRT got a lucky 13th place in Canada, but have had no where near the best pace or reliabilty.

Lotus have a great set up, but also suffer with reliability. Virgin have had more 2 car finishes than either HRT or Lotus, but that gets no recognition...

[ESPImperium]

Relyability of the cars is as follows:

Team Lotus-Renault T128: 8 DNFs
Marussia Virgin-Cosworth MVR/02: 3 DNFs with 1 DNS
(HRT) Hispania-Cosworth F111: 3 DNF with 2 DNQs

Relyability stakes the Virgin and Hispania cars both have a much better relyabiility rate than the Team Lotus, however the T128 qualifys alot better, as much as 1% time wise better than the MVR/02 and 1.6% better than the F111.

The T128 has an average finish of 10.3 on average and the MVR/02 usually finishes on average 10.7 and the F111 usually finishes 11.7 on average if you were only to have 12 cars on track.

Pit stop wise the Hispania is lighter on its tyres with 45 stops to the season so far with Team Lotus doing one more, Virgin have had 49 pit stops so far.

The Lotus is the best car of the 3, however the T128 has fallen back the last few races and its all down to the ammount of effort put into the power steering for Jarno. Id say that in the couple of races Team Lotus will update their car once more and thats it. Hispania will do a simmilar strategy, on a much smaller scale. Virgin will use this car as a test mule for next year i think. As development has effectivly stoped on this car, id recon that they will test parts for 2012 now and get the 2012 car right.

Id recon that Hispania and Virgin will close to Team Lotus, however, Team Lotus will close in on the midfeild as well. The Team Lotus increment gain will be much smaller than what Virgin and Hispania will have, id recon that Team Lotus will make a increment gain of arround 1% - 1.3% on the midfeild, whitch will get them into the STR-Sauber-Force India-Williams battle. Virgin will make arround a 1.7% - 2.1% gain, whitch will be slightly better than Team Lotus at present, Hispania id recon will make a simmilar gain, arround 1.8% to 2.3% incremental gain, this should put them and Virgin in a straight up fight that can sometimes spill into the middle of the race on occasion, but not on a regular theme of the races.

In other words, Virgin and Hispania will gap Team Lotus, but they wont gap them consistantly enough to make the jump to the middle of the pack. I think 2013 will see Virgin and Hispania make a massive leap to what their 2010 and 2011 cars have done to date so far. I could be wrong tho.

[Polarbear]

Thanks for the data Imperium, it makes very interesting reading...what do those percentages equal in terms of lap time gain from current performance? For example, will Virgin find the 2 secs Nick Wirth said their Turkey upgrade would bring?

Does anyone have any insider info on what is actually going on with Virgin and McLaren? I heard the deal takes the Force India deal a step further...

[Petroltorque]

Its nothing like the FI deal. MVR will continue to use Cosworth Engines, Xtrac transmission and Cosworth KERS. The deal gives access to the Macca Windtunnel and simulation programs.

[siwillems]

Its nothing like the FI deal. MVR will continue to use Cosworth Engines, Xtrac transmission and Cosworth KERS. The deal gives access to the Macca Windtunnel and simulation programs.

I'd be suprised if that were to remain the case. If renault are successfull in changing the rules so they can supply their engines to four teams instead of the current three then it would be a fair assumption to say that virgin would pursue the rout of mercedes engine, gearbox and relative kers unit (which ever unit is used with the mercedes engine).

This would effectively contract out a lot of the work they have to do to an outside source who frankly are much more capable than virgin to do this. Then all the team has to worry about is bringing all the different parts together into a more effective package.

If I was running virgin (I wish) then this is the avenue i would take, outsource to effective bussiness partners and then use the limited resources at hand to focus on the remaining tasks. This would potentialy give the team a huge bost performance wise which should hopfully be realised in increased revenue streams from sponsorship etc.

Any way thats my 2 cents, for what it's worth.

[Petroltorque]

Then I'm afraid you will remain surprised. A Merc engine/transmission/KERS package your not going to get much change from euro 11 million a year. Virgins priority remains developping an effective aero program. In short the weakness of Virgins package is chassis/aero not transmission.

[ESPImperium]

I was under the impression that Virgin will use the McLaren Applied Technologies gearbox and suspension from this years McLaren. With Virgin getting arround 45-60 McLaren staff that will run the gearbox package during the season. The deal was to include access to the McLaren wind tunnel and simulation technology and the McLaren simulator as well. Not to mention both drivers getting access to the McLaren wellbeing and fitness suite as well for training. For the Tunnel, Simulation and Well Being there was to be staff that came with that as well, as McLaren have to find places for arround 300 staff that would be jobless with the RRA for 2012, and Virgin were to take on arround 100 of those guys.

Force India were seemingly to get the same deal as what they have, but with more staff as well, arround about 50 McLaren staff would be taken by Force India as well.

[Petroltorque]

I find that rather interesting. Having re-read Andy Webb's Press statement following te deal there is absolutely no mention of a McLaren Transmission deal. Virgin already have their own bespoke seamless shift box, they spent the whole of the off season improving its reliability. Are they simply going to bin that investment?

[marcush.]

Lotus ,let´s make no bones about it is a complete disappointment .All the recruiting and building up ,new engine and top gearbox was not enough to come close to fighting for Q2 let alone points finishes as they announced in the winter.
They suffer Virgin of 2010 style reliability as well ,shame on Gascoyne who should know how to build quality.
Their inability to solve the steering rack issues is also a sign of disorder in the engineering department and I really think last years car was just something they could drag out of the drawer but not a base for this year..so effectively they started from zero again ...but carrying a lack of expertise in some areas as it was practically their first car...

The same will be true for Virgin next year ...I´m still not convinced that this MAT connection will yield a massive boost for 2012 .

[horse]

I think that is a little harsh on Lotus, marcush. How many startup formula one teams made an impression before their 3rd season? I can't think of one. If they keep the level of investment and don't start scoring points next year then I would say they have not delivered on their promises. They are definitely closer this season and a similar step will see them competitive next year.

Back to the OP, I don't know about Virgin, as next year will be the first year of "taking it seriously" with a seemingly new (ish) team of engineers and I think they will need more than one season to make an impression. They may be where Lotus are now, as in just off the pace of the midfield strugglers.

[ESPImperium]

I pretty much aggree, TL pretty much chose to go with a year 1 car again in effect. Id say they have spent too much time on the steering, however the fact that the steering they have now is the same as what Toyota used on the TF109 as i belive they went to Toyota Motor Group and pretty much got them to design a new rack for Jarno as they had Jarnos data from 2005 to 2009 on file.

TL have to improve ther CFD facilities as their £1m one that they have had since late 2009 is poorer than the CFD that HRT not have. And the wind tunnel they will use from Late August will help as the Formtech tunnel in Italy is a weak point for them, the Williams #1 tunnel will be an advancement for them, even though they will use it only 40% of the time as Williams will use it Monday to Thursday and TL will iuse it from Friday to Sunday i belive so that Williams and TL can develop their 2012 cars without too much interfearance, and also keep their CFD facilities running at a decent level with the RRA.

Virgin have pretty much done a Hispania 2010 this year, taken a base car and then understood how to make it work and developed the set up to make lap time. Early season updates, especially the Turkley one are now understood and they know what to do with them.

I belive that Hispania are looking for a final update, then develop the set up for the remainder of the season.

With pretty much stable rules for 2012, id expect for all teams to concentrate on setup from Spa or Singapore. Id think that Ferrari, McLaren and Red Bull will update till much later on.

Id expect the class of F1 2012 to be much closer than 2010 and 2011, maybes where we were in 2007 with 2.2 to 2.7 seconds covering the whole grid, track dependant. Id like to see the 2009 grid to be replicated with only 1.7 to 2.1 seconds covering the whole grid in 2013.

[TzeiTzei]

Id expect the class of F1 2012 to be much closer than 2010 and 2011, maybes where we were in 2007 with 2.2 to 2.7 seconds covering the whole grid, track dependant. Id like to see the 2009 grid to be replicated with only 1.7 to 2.1 seconds covering the whole grid in 2013.

Not gonna happen. Virgin have been on average 5,7 secs off the pole position time in qualifyings. Catching the front of the grid by three seconds during the winter is out of the question.

The average gap to Lotus has been 1,3 secs, but i can't see Virgin catching them either. They are once again pretty much starting from the scratch, and i just can't see them doing so much better a job than the guys at Lotus. I predict that next year is going to be another difficult struggle for the team, with possibly the performance getting stronger as the season unfolds and they get to develop the car.

Hopefully i'm wrong and they are much more competitive right from the start next year.

[marcush.]

For Force India the switch in 2009 to Mclaren engineering assistance provided a remarkable turnaround in fortunes and speed ,even though the car was converted to the new drivetrain in a late phase of the design process.(comparable to Brawns switch from Honda to Mercedes power).
So it seems understandable that Virgin has high hopes from this partnership.The question is how much they can carry over from MCL in terms of hardware ,gearbox,KERS etc considering the close ties with Mercedes and Virgin at this time bound to Cosworth.