Russian Sports Car Maker Invests In Virgin F1
Marussia takes 'significant stake' in rookie F1 team
The team will be re-branded as Marussia Virgin Racing in 2011. "It's massive," said Virgin team boss John Booth. "The future was solid but this makes us secure for four years."
Branson was equally upbeat about the news. "Virgin is delighted to have secured a partner which shares our vision and spirit for challenging the establishment."
The involvement of Marussia - whose boss Nikolay Fomenko who is a former racer and presenter on the Russian version of Top Gear - has inevitably sparked speculation that a Russian driver will be dropped into one of the Marussia virgin seats for 2011.
Whatever the eventual driver line-up, Virgin will no doubt be hoping to put the bad memories of its debut season behind it - it started the 2010 season with a fuel tank that was too small to last an entire race, and has subsequently been dogged by reliability issues.
The other 2010 rookies, meanwhile, are also looking to improve on 2010 - Hispania Racing has secured new financial backing and is rumoured to be running a Williams gearbox next year, while Lotus has secured a deal to use Renault engines for 2011, along with a Red Bull gearbox and hydraulics.
Pics: Haja Rasambainarivo/Morio
heck, the cars even looked similar. And that was with the remnants of Jordan - Manor Motorsport (AKA Virgin F1) don't even have that level of experience.
Having said all that I wish Marussia Virgin the best - the grid would be less interesting without these new teams.
Hello everyone 
I've been following this site for ages don't ask me why i never signed up i really don't know. That last post really made me laugh and so has the whole Ry_B thing that had me in tears lol.
But I can't see Richard Branson giving up much control to be honest he has wanted to be in F1 for a long time!
Anyone know what kind of sales the Malrussian lot have? Its a an expensive game F1 and seems strange for a lesser company to be involved.
i'm glad the booths have got this investment, they've managed to get through the difficult first year and hopefully can build on it and mix it with lotus (1 malaysia etc), STR, and even force india.
Very few joint ventures or other deals with the Russians tend to go well. It's a highly nationalistic country not averse to using its ever changing laws to its own benefit and nothing happens there without the tacit approval of the state. Tread carefully.
If HRT can pull a rabbit out of a hat and get some structure behind them, then we'll have a far more competitive 2nd half of the grid.
I'm not going to be Russian-ist.
s off out of F1.He will NEVER put a penny in. Remember this team is MANOR not Virgin - this is just a branding exercise to supposedly bring in more case from other "sponsors" at NO cost to Branson. He will take any money - i.e.from this Russian lot. Yep it will end badly and is a total not want F1 needs.
No doubt Bernie will run them out the door when he has finally had enough of Branson. He spent less tan begger all at Brawn (apparently 1/4 Mill for all the publicity - it would have cost way more than that to fly him and flunkies to the GP's he attended).
Manor need this d*ck to move on.
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