Sporting director confident next year's car will be on the level
Last Updated: November 16, 2011 3:03pm
Lowdon: Virgin are overcoming teething troubles
Virgin Racing sporting director Graeme Lowdon is confident the missing piece of the team's jigsaw can finally be put in place next year.
The Dinnington-based team are coming to the end of their second Formula One season but have so far failed to progress and look set to finish bottom of the constructors' championship table as they did in their debut season.
Like fellow newcomers Lotus and HRT, they have yet to score a point and will be struggling to improve upon their best finish of 14th place in the season-ending Brazilian Grand Prix next weekend.
In such instances, alarm bells usually start ringing regarding the long-term viability of a team, but Virgin are here to stay, even if the name will no longer apply.
From next year the team is to be rebranded Marussia courtesy of the investment they receive from the Russian sportscar manufacturer.
Behind the scenes progress is being made as they receive technical assistance from McLaren, whilst the team will also relocate from South Yorkshire to a new factory that is currently being built in Banbury.
Lowdon knows all that is required now is a car that will finally elevate them into midfield, and potentially scoring points.
"It's no secret that we had hoped for more from this year's car, but that clearly wasn't going to happen once we got it," he said.
"We developed it as much as we could within the resources allowed, but it was evident this year was always going to be what you could call a character-building season.
"We've just had to live with that, to push as hard as we can, and when opportunities have come along, to take them.
"So the focus now is on next year's car. That's the key, with a huge amount of resource and effort going into that.
"We're all eagerly waiting to see how we can develop that, but at least we've the processes and resources in place now to develop the car much, much quicker than we have done this one."
Step backwards
For Lowdon, the teething troubles that go with being a start-up team are behind them, in particular their all-CFD (computational fluid dynamics) approach under former technical director Nick Wirth who departed earlier this year.
Lowdon concedes it has meant taking "a step backwards this year" in order to go forwards, with the corner seemingly turned going into 2012.
"We've had to completely rewire how we approached the technical side," said Lowdon.
"I'd like to think we have a pretty good race team now, one that is capable of running a much faster car.
"I think we've demonstrated that with good strategy in races, good reliability, good pit-stop performances, so we are certainly ready to run a quicker car.
"The missing piece of the jigsaw is having a car capable of the performance level we want to be competing at next year.
"But we've been through a massive recruitment, we're building the new factory and putting a lot of resource in place there.
"It means there is now much more focus on the car, whereas in year one, as a start-up team, we were focusing on everything, building from scratch.
"This year there has been a lot less of that, we've been able to optimise the performance of what we have, and that's gone really well in a lot of areas, and hopefully we'll see the rewards in the future."
Credit: Sky Sports (www.skysports.com)
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