Virgin to debut 2010 car at Silverstone

Virgin will run its 2010 car for the first time at Silverstone on 4 February, German driver Timo Glock revealed on Friday.

He said the car, which will reportedly sport a mainly black livery for the British team’s debut this season, is to run at the British GP circuit over two days.

The bulk of the F1 world will have just completed the opening three day group test of the pre-season at Valencia.

Glock said that after the Silverstone debut, Virgin will travel to the second group test of the winter at Jerez.

“We thought about going (to Valencia) but then we opted for Silverstone,” he said in an interview with Germany’s Auto Motor und Sport.

“As a new team we can perform a functional test outside of the official dates.  Silverstone is at our front door.  If something goes wrong at Valencia, we could not react as quickly,” Glock added.

The 27-year-old said he thinks some of Virgin’s rivals “may be a little surprised that, as a new team, we have been quite aggressive” with the 2010 car.

Glock, who drove for the departed Toyota in 2009, also said he elected to go to Virgin in 2010 despite having “a few” other options available to him.

“With Renault it was not exactly clear what their future will look like,” he said.  “Even with Sauber, everything was open.

“We often talked, but they could not tell me any details.  I had contact with some other top teams but it was very vague.  I wanted to make my decision and I liked the Virgin project very much,” said the veteran of 37 grands prix.

© RIF|GMM