Thursday Thoughts: A Branson Pickle?
It’s time once again for “Thursday Thoughts” a great little idea from Sidepodcast that sees the blogging community get together to answer the same question, from their own individual point of view. Since no-one had actually volunteered to pose the question this week I thought I could give it a whirl.
Whilst updating the testing statistics for the pre-season test it struck me that Virgin Racing aren’t having an great time of it so far. Having completed a mere 1167 km of testing they’ve barely covered two thirds of the distance of Lotus, the other new team to have turned up. The difference is that Lotus have only completed one group test to Virgin’s two.
That got me wondering what team owner Richard Branson will be thinking at this moment. He was in on the 2009 season from the start; as a sponsor for Brawn GP he had it all, the excitement, the wins, the acclaim and most of all, a great PR opportunity.
Branson had the chance to buy into Brawn or become the team sponsor but he thought that with Brawns’ success it had become too expensive. He chose to take an alternative route, to buy a newby team from Manor GP and rebrand it with the Virgin name for much less money. Did he do the right thing?
So my question to you is this:
“Do you think that Richard Branson regrets his decision to buy Manor instead of sticking with Brawn GP?”
Ladies and Gentlemen it’s over to you…
I think he will regret not buying a share in Brawn right at the start of last season. There must have been an option to buy a minority shareholding if he committed to a year’s sponsorship right at the start. Had he done that he could probably have sold his share for what he spent on sponsorship giving him a year’s free sponsorship.
Now that Mercedes own the team though he would not get anything like the same coverage for his money and certainly not the same kind of exposure. Last year he was on TV a lot because there was Brawn, Button or him. This year with Mercedes there will be a lot more people available and the last thing Mercedes want to represent them is some maverick. (sorry Mav)
I think he had to change teams for this season if he was to stay in F1 and Branson being Branson would not want to spend the money necessary to go with one of the big teams so he has the choice of going with one of the traditional back of the grid teams or a new team. A new team is more exciting than an old unsuccessful team so given that his choice is limited. USF1 is dead and has looked to be dead for a long time. Campos was on equally shaky ground until recently. So that leaves Lotus or Virgin. Lotus is the domain of his rival Tony Fernandes so the only new team available to Branson was Virgin.
There really was no other option that would allow him to behave like himself and get a good return on his investment in the form of him being on TV plugging his brand. It will be interesting to see how often he appears if the team is not successful. Steven Roy(Quote)
my 2 cents are not that far away… here’s the link http://www.vivaf1.com/blog/?p=2737 but you might already be on the same page anyway
Maverick(Quote)
Here’s my answer: http://sidepodcast.com/2010/02/25/thursday-thoughts-a-branson-pickle/
Great question
Christine(Quote)
Branson has positioned himself *exactly* where he wants to be.
This is repeat behaviour and should be watched closely.
Castor(Quote)
I’ve always been a bit suspicious of Nick Wirth. On the one hand, as a failed engineer myself, I admire his pioneering spirit and sheer balls at trying new things. That sort of person should be encouraged and lauded as the drivers for the breakthroughs of the future.
On the other hand… his engineering ideas are sometimes so experimental as to fly in the face of sense. Anyone remember the original Simtek design? I don’t mean the one that actually hit the track, but the one that Wirth showed the world in (I think) 1992. It was amazing, all sculpted edges, integrated suspension components, and hugely innovative. Unfortunately, it was also insanely expensive, so the car that Ratzenburger found himself driving in 1994 was pretty much conventional. It was only when budgets increased to the dizzying levels of recent years that the degree of aerodynamic development needed to optimise such an aero-driven design could be achieved. Unfortunately having to go back to the drawing board put Simtek so far behind that they never really recovered. Strike 1.
Although his Acura cars in the last couple of years have swept all before them, this may not actually be because of Wirth. His (again) brave decision to run equal size front and rear wheels may seem beneficial on first sight, but actually I find it very hard to believe that they provide any benefit (and may actually be harmful) in the real world. Rear tyres are wide because they have to cope with both cornering and power inputs; front tyres only really handle cornering (with a little bit of extra braking duty). So with equal sizes front and back you either have a car that oversteers like crazy if you optimise the tyre size for the rear loads, or oversteers if you optimise for the front. Brutal driving could overcome the former, but you’ll trash the rear tyres. And even if you up cornering speeds slightly the added rotational, unsprung mass at the front will play havoc with the car’s dynamics. Rotating masses count (approximately) double when you calculate their effect on acceleration and braking forces, as not only do they have to accelerate in a linear sense, they also have to gain or shed rotational momentum. The fact that Acura were completely eclipsed in any races that involved international-standard teams seems to suggest that their dominance in N. America might be due more to engine superiority than chassis design.
And so we come to Manor/Virgin. Again Wirth is taking a brave approach to the design, relying solely on CFD for design and testing. However, as soon as I saw the Virgin car I thought “hang on, they’ve built socking great stress-raisers into the front wing supports”. Sure enough, the car hit the track and, surprise surprise, the front wing supports failed. The exemplifies my problems with Wirth; although he has huge technical and computing capability, he seems to be mostly lacking an engineering eye. Generally, the successful race car designers of the past have lent more toward the opposite distribution of skills. I can see why his approach and history appealed to Richard Branson, but I can’t shake the feeling that Wirth might be more of a liability to Virgin than an asset. It will be interesting to see how long he and The Beard stay friends should the car be hanging off the back of the pack all season… John C.(Quote)
Sorry… I meant “understeers if you optimise for the rear” Doh! John C.(Quote)
Hi there, I’ve been reading your weblog for about a month now. I just desired to stop lurking and say hi
Jaime(Quote)