Sir Richard Branson, the chairman of the Virgin Group which has linked up with the backmarking Manor GP team for 2010 in Formula One, says that he is still enjoying life in the sport despite his team having spent it's first year at the back of the grid.
Branson's company joined the grid at the start of last season, linking up with the otherwise-sponsorless Brawn GP team in a hugely successful partnership.
But, keen for a more cost-effective way to remain in the sport, Branson linked up with the new Manor GP team for 2010, adding his sponsorship to the car and renaming the new team to Virgin Racing.
And Branson has insisted that he has no regrets about the decision, despite the rookie team having spent their first season in the sport stuck at the back of the grid with the other rookie teams.
“It actually hasn’t been hard at all,” he grinned when asked how difficult it had been to go from winning a world title with Brawn to scrapping for 19th place on the grid.
“It’s great fun. As I said at the beginning of the season we knew we were going to be the underdogs, we went into it with our eyes open. And it’s fun building a new team from scratch. There are quite a lot of other people who’d love to be able to get new teams in who have been turned down. "
He added: “The team are delivering what they promised on reliability and so on. The amount of money that this team is spending is £15m less than Lotus – maybe £20m less – so to be almost matching them car for car is great. And the reliability has been better.
“No. I would have had to have been a little bit foolish to assume that we were going to have a new team and we were going to start winning in F1. It takes a number of years to build a new team from scratch. It’s been fun. I’ve actually had just as much fun watching if we could beat Lotus – I think it’s just about as much fun!”
He insisted that the smaller investment in the backmarking team compared to his Brawn GP deal was still providing the company with a good amount of exposure.
“We didn’t spend much money last year, and we haven’t spent a lot of money last year," he smiled, "The Virgin brand is strong, and it attracts other sponsors and people want to be involved with the Virgin cars, so it’s worked well for us both years.
"Obviously the coverage was more when you’re winning, but we were just ridiculously lucky last year. You don’t get many of those in a life time.”
He even suggested that the Virgin company might trim down their own branding on the car for next season, if there are new sponsors there to take its place.
“These guys seem to be doing quite well on the sponsorship for next year, and if they do that then more space will be taken up by outside sponsors, but that’s a positive thing," he explained.
"We obviously hope to keep Virgin on the back of the car. But ultimately it’s up to these guys, how many sponsors they get. I would very much hope it continues to be known as the Virgin Racing team.”
He added that the 'fight' for tenth place in the constructors standings with the other newbie teams was not a hugely important issue for his team in terms of funding.
“Nobody’s expecting it or budgeting for it, and even if you got the 10th place you wouldn’t get the money for another couple of years," he shrugged.
"You’ve got to have 10th place over two seasons in order to get that money. We’d certainly like a lot of rain [in the coming races] because it gives us a lot better chance of getting it!”
Virgin currently sit last of the twelve teams in the 2010 world championship, based on their best race finishes this season.
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