Virgin Racing Formula One team, one of the sport’s four new entrants for the 2010 season, has unveiled its VR-01 race car. Virgin says that the VR-01 “is the first of a new breed of race car designed entirely in the digital domain using CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics)”, which means there were no scalemodel and no wind tunnel testing to bring this car to life. The digital launch happenned on VR’s website and the VR-01 was taken directly to Silverstone where it will undergo a two-day shakedown prior to its first scheduled test in Jerez next week.
When “virgins” Timo Glock and Lucas di Grassi start testing, the VR-01 should feel very similar to the car they “drove” on the Wirth Research simulator, said Technical Director, Nick Wirth. The team that was originally named Manor Motorsport are using Cosworth’s CA2010 V8 engines this year.
“I’m sure we will be measured by how fast the car is on the track in Jerez next week, but I hope that doesn’t overshadow the far bigger achievement of pulling an entire racing team together and taking a brave step that defies convention. In many ways this is an exploration, but given the absolute self-belief we have seen, I can’t help but feel very excited about what we can go on to achieve in the years ahead,” said Sir Richard Branson, Virgin’s chairman.
Cool logo, cool livery (check out the “tribal tattoo” design!) and a cool boss – Virgin could well take over from the Red Bull contingent as the fun guys of the paddock!
More pics after the jump.
Danny Tan loves driving as much as he loves a certain herbal meat soup, and sweet engine music as much as drum beats. He has been in the auto industry since 2006, previously filling the pages of two motoring magazines before joining this website. Enjoys detailing the experience more than the technical details.
Fffffirst!
Now that's a great color combination. Cool!
a pure virgin car….
fully digital?
does that mean they only use a little bit of money to develop this car,
wow,impressive.
ohhhh nice design
If one of the other cars knocked into one of these in the race, can the driver in the other car say that he banged a virgin?
Interesting, using CFD analysis without no scalemodel and no wind tunnel testing. They have team with strong fundamental in fluid dynamic knowledge.
The rival to lotus team. Tony, beware u.
black n red..nicely mixed…
i like…
He ought to be serious in this if he doesnt want to end up wearing an Airasia air stewardess uniform
typical american color!!! NASCAR color combination!! especially with a lot of white tapes..haha
An F1 car's steering alone costs 30,000 pounds…. it is 1 d most expensive and glamorous sport out there…. ( apart from football…..)
wow, which team did virgin took over?
mig fx vs fx pro
haha been using both
now thats a a true f1 car
its awesome
im rooting for virgin
now that's a freakin cool and ganas looking F1 racing machine.
holy crap, our 1Malaysia car is gonna look soooooooooooo FUGLY!!
hows about perfomance? wihout wind tunnel test, we dont know whther its met aerodynamics that need it..
looks much better than lotus
Malasda 3 menopause aka mazda 3 mps
how did you know this car looks better than lotus
shut up la wei,act like you know everything some more
they haven't launch yet
if a f1 car look great,doesn't mean that they will win
ExCeLLent luKin car i wouLd say..!! luV de NoseJob!
AeRodyNamiCs deSign is FanTasTic! nice DiffuSer!
Hey thy hve triBaL taBoo desiGn-mayB fr a Gd luCk charM!!
watch out ToNy!! n
SquawK;-tht's a Gd 1!! hopE nt to haPPn though.
I will always support Lotus F1 Team, 1 Malaysia.
me oso always the lotus supporter and oso petronas mercedes gp team
Latest rumour is that car will also be only added to races digitally to TV picture.
Team spokesperson commented:
"We are about to revolutionise budget level needed to go racing. We will add our car digitally based on CFD numbers agreed with FIA. Other F1 teams will be envy with what flexibility we can use with our car livery. We also offered to track owners in Turkey and China to provide digital Virgin Racing spectators crowds for empty grandstands at bargain price of €9,99 per single spectator avatar.
We are also contracted to provide whole track avatar for race in South Korea"
http://www.pitpass.com/fes_php/pitpass_news_item….
"Virgin passes rear impact test"
LOL
redfueler said,
February 4, 2010 @ 8:44 pm
hows about perfomance? wihout wind tunnel test, we dont know whther its met aerodynamics that need it..
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CFD is a well established field and with the computational muscles we have now, it is just as good as the wind tunnel for development purposes. You can virtually test many more design variations and iterations at much lower cost compared to the wind tunnel testing. Off-topic, some countries are even using computer simulation to virtually test their aging nuclear warheads and most of the safety features on modern cars are virtually crashtested many times in order to come up with the best optimized designs.
nice batik stripe
I think without proper testing using scale model, somehow the aerodynamic can't be measure 100% accurately. Well let's see who will become flight attendant, either Dato's Fernandes or Sir Richard Branson. Great fight between budget airline boss!!!
nice mix and match colour design…love kinda design…
Wonder how Lotus F1 livery will look like, possibly ala JPS Black & Gold? British Racing Green? or Yellow?
better call it Ornament, not tattoo.
nice car btw.
Black & Gold was because was JPS was their big sponsor and did not represent the Lotus brand.
Yellow was because Camel was their big sponsor and did not represent the Lotus brand.
I'm quite sure it WILL be mainly green with some yellow as THAT represents the Lotus brand, unless they have found a major Title sponsor, which Lotus F1 hasn't.
Otherwise having the car in Black&Gold or Yellow would be giving free advertising mileage to JPS or Camel, which is stupid. People will still mentally associate those colours with those brands even if their logos do not appear on the car it self.
looks good. hope it drives good too. I wanna see this car kick ass, and i wana see Fenandez wear skirt.
Would have added a touch of class if they had added Virgin Atlantic Scarlet Lady to the car's livery.
Zain, you are sick, man! LOL!
Not sure if the black color will augur well for the car in terms of technical / reliability performance as dark color attracts heat. I remembered Jordan F1 car was black & yellow, but more yellow than black. Any experts to chip-in?
In recent years, most of the teams using black and/or white never quite made it.
harap lotus f1 racing lebih baik daripada virgin racing
No technical (heat) issue with black paint. Affects are minimal. There have been many F1 cars in the past with significant black sections. Mclaren, Pre-Petronas Sauber, to name a a few. Even in other racing series.
Jordan was yellow because of commercial advantages. Visibility.
Virgin can afford to have this creative, almost 'psychedelic' design on the front wings actually because they're lacking sponsors and so they're liberal with their livery design. But you'll see that the important partner logos especially VR and a few others are bold enough so as to not get drowned by the creative patterns.
The 'tribal design' on the front wing is a no-no if they had a sponsor logo to place there, as it will 'drown' the logo. It's reported that Virgin had one of their sponsors ,Tourism Portugal pulled out at the last minute. Alvaro Parente was supposed to be their 4th driver and packaged with that sponsor. Parente unfortunately now dropped from the team and thus you see only 3 drivers in the photos above.
Airasia is red and white, lotus is yellow and green.
The tribal tattoo is the Iban Tattoo design which is a motif of the vine tendrils.. Too bad Tony being a Malaysian did not see this for his F1 car design. Robbie Williams has it and Anthony Bourdain had it when he visited Sarawak… Check out.. http://www.amazon.com/Basic-design-Augustine-Angg…
- Uchu Sengalang Burong
Even with the best CFD software, it is just a simulation/prediction based on past data inputs.It cannot predict everything, like handling in the rain or when the tyres have worn out. (I might be wrong here). Neither can it guarentee complete system reliability under race conditions. Yes, it can save a lot of testing money but you can only see the real performance when the drivers takes it on track and race it against other cars in the pre-testing trails.
I really like the team livery, reminds me of R3! Good luck VR!