The new Marussia Virgin Racing looks a lot like the old one? looks like the nose is lower to the ground (were every other team this season has a high nose ? I wonder how they will perform this season ? The launch video will be on line later today (will just say I have made my assumptions on the picture on the MVR web site) http://www.virginracing.com/
have found some more pictures http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/2011/02/07/virgin-mvr-02-launch-first-pictures/
Livery is a slight improvement from last year. This is the problem with only CFD - aerodynamically, the car is basic. I can't see Virgin getting into Q2 with this.
It does look a lot more like last years than the rest of this years cars we've seen, although they do seem to have the heavy undercut to the sidepods that seems common this season. The rear doesn't look as well packaged as on the likes of the Williams, and exhausts look more conventional - although the barge board arrangement looks similar to that on the renault. It'll be interesting to know if they've held anything back themselves, like many of the other teams. With the investment they're supposed to have had, does anyone think they'll be more competitive this season? Interesting that the entire car was designed with CFD rather than any wind tunnel testing, I'd be curious to know which is cheaper - the supercomputer or a wind tunnel? I know the other teams use a mix of the two, so there must be advantages to both.
will be interesting indeed as to how they do this season maybe with the ban on double defusers. It may bring the a little closer? That remains to be seen as a lot of teams have spent a loads of time working to compensate the loss of the DD
I imagine most teams will have managed to create downforce in other ways though, which (no offense to the Virgin Racing Engineers) I imagine they have not developed due to lack of resources. Certainly there was no indication they had a double floor like Toro Rosso, front exhausts like Renault, etc. A lot of teams, moreso the midfield than Ferrai and Red Bull this year, have produced some innovative ideas, but I can't see anything too special on the MVR02, I'd like to be proved wrong though, I don't care who wins too much (Well, Team Lotus is my pipe dream), but I'd love all the teams to be competitive. If the entire field could be within half a second to a second, we'd get some very close racing.
I guess Virgin are nolonger backed by Kappa who made the team actually look fairly stylish last year. I liked the patterns they had on the 2010 car this is more boring and boring race suits
