Virgin on the ridiculous

[Wookieboy]

Virgin Racing will have to make wholesale changes to their car which has been approved by the FIA this weekend after it emerged that their current cars fuel tank is too small and will not get them to the end of a Grand Prix if they run at full speed!! Seems the CFD approach by Nick Wirth failed to design a fuel tank big enough!!! I think Richard Branson is going to be pretty cheesed off with the negative publicity this will generate and that the team has now become the laughing stock of F1. The man is not used to losing.

[simon1220]

Stealing the BBC headline ;)

But i agree, this is a pretty amateur mistake and the fact they wont fix it till the European grand prix's, means the next few GP's are basically glorified test sessions, as they wont be able to race full speed as they wont reach the end, all of which will then count for nothing when they have to change the length of the car, which will surely change the technical details of set ups etc.

[Wookieboy]

What makes this whole mess worse was that the team seemed to know about this quite a few months ago. After the Autosport Awards in November, Mark Hughes wrote in his column for Autosport about all the gossip that was flying about there with regard to the 2010 season. And one of the big rumours was that a new team had found out that its fuel tank was too small to complete a race distance. We now know who that is. Seems like rather than making the changes back then, they pressed on with the launch and testing so as not to be behind schedule and to build up relaibility on the car. That's a highly dangerous game to play....not only are they now being ridiculed by the other teams for this mistake but the negative press this will create surely has to tarnish the Virgin name.

[kezbabybabe]

Does that also take into consideration pitstops and corners? Can't take either of those at full speed. :rolleyes:

That's a pretty big whoopsie, but I'm sure they'll cope with it the best they can.

[lukeozade0405]

Erm wow! lol

Probably the biggest change to the rule book this year 'No refuelling' and the chief designer of one of the teams forgets/miscalculates the size of the fuel tank......"D'oh!"