Marussia Virgin Racing
Marussia Virgin Racing is a young but ambitious Anglo-Russian team competing in the FIA Formula One World Championship. It entered the sport as Virgin Racing in 2010, beating off stiff competition from a number of contenders for one of only a handful of new team entries.
The team was originally conceived by John Booth and Graeme Lowdon, whose Manor Motorsport operation in the North of England achieved unrivalled Formula 3 success and played a major role in the development of several of today’s great motor racing talents. Initially they worked with Wirth Research as their technical partner, taking advantage of their low-cost design approach that had yielded success in Le Mans sports cars and Indy Racing. Together with the commercial firepower of Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin, one of the most recognised, respected and exciting brands in the world, they created a new racing team concept, capitalising upon F1’s new economic dawn and the Resource Restriction Agreement that had begun to redefine the sport.
The team’s debut season was a tough test but this energetic and highly-motivated group of people proved that they were more than equal to the challenge. In November 2010, Russian sports car manufacturer Marussia, who had sponsored Virgin Racing throughout its debut season and witnessed at close quarters its true grit and enormous potential, acquired a significant shareholding in the team, thus securing its long-term future.
In the Spring of 2011, Marussia Virgin Racing embarked on a challenging but exciting three-year plan to put the team in podium contention in time for the inaugural Russian Grand Prix in Sochi in 2014. The seriousness of its intent to become a real contender was underlined with two major announcements that represent an exciting new chapter in the team’s development. Firstly, it concluded a long-term Technical Partnership with McLaren Applied Technologies which will see Marussia Virgin Racing benefit from access to McLaren facilities, knowledge and capabilities. Secondly, the team acquired the Formula One business of WRT, its former technical partner, including WRT’s leading-edge technical centre in Banbury, Oxfordshire, UK. This will provide an interim base for Marussia Virgin Racing whilst the team progresses its plans to develop a bespoke new facility more suited to the team’s long-term tenure within the sport and which will allow the team to ultimately come together under the same roof.
Bold ambitions require bold steps and the management team now feels that all the right moves have been made to ensure a successful future for Marussia Virgin Racing.