The backmarking Virgin Racing squad have reportedly become the third Formula One team to apply for a full name change for 2012, with the team looking to be officially rebranded as 'Marussia' from the start of next season.
Virgin Racing entered Formula One back in 2010, as part of Richard Branson's efforts to get his brand onto the grid without paying excessive amounts of sponsorship.
Branson had originally entered the sport in 2009, supplying some cut-price sponsorship to the champion brawn GP team.
For 2011, the team became Marussia Virgin Racing after linking up with the Russian sportscar manufacturer.
And the team has now lodged an application to drop the 'Virgin Racing' part of their name from 2012, becoming simply Marussia.
Virgin have become the third team to lodge a request for a name change for next season, along with the pair of Lotus-branded teams.
Team Lotus have applied to change their name to Caterham, while the Lotus Renault GP squad will simply become Lotus, hopefully ending the Lotus v Lotus confusion.
All three teams require the backing of 18 of the 26 members of the F1 Commission in order to proceed with their plans.
The Commission is set to debate the three proposed name changes at a meeting in Geneva this week.
Despite Virgin being dropped from the team name, the brand is set to remain part of the team into 2012 and beyond.
Earlier this year, Ferrari, Sauber and HRT requested a clarification of the rules regarding name changes, amid concerns that F1 could lose it's identity should the process become too common.
Speaking about the request, Ferrari boss Stefano Domenicali mused said that his team were simply concerned about the potential for the sport to suffer from name changes.
"We want to clarify the fact that for the future we need to put certain rules in place in order to make sure that this is not becoming every two weeks a trade off position that some teams can use," he explained.
"We need to make sure that there is something that is relevant for the promoter."
He also claimed to have no issue with the requests from the two Lotus teams, though it is unclear how he will feel about the Dinnington-based team losing their Virgin tag.
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