{"id":3983,"date":"2010-03-31T10:35:15","date_gmt":"2010-03-31T14:35:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/?p=3983"},"modified":"2010-03-31T10:35:15","modified_gmt":"2010-03-31T14:35:15","slug":"car-designer-wirth-to-foot-bill-for-virgin-redesign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/formula-1\/car-designer-wirth-to-foot-bill-for-virgin-redesign\/","title":{"rendered":"Car designer Wirth to foot bill for Virgin redesign"},"content":{"rendered":"<h5><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Wirth Research, as distinct from the team Virgin Racing or Manor Motorsport, is set to foot the estimated 1 million pounds sterling bill for redesigning the VR-01 F1 car.<\/span><\/h5>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>It emerged a few days ago that the outfit was given a green light by the FIA to change its homologated chassis, because the fuel tank was found to be between 15-20 litres too small to power a full race distance.<\/p>\n<p>The revised car, to be ready to debut in Spain in early May, will feature a completely revised chassis and bodywork.<\/p>\n<p>Virgin chief executive Graeme Lowdon said the problem was a &#8220;supplier issue&#8221;; a phrase repeated by Sir Richard Branson in Melbourne, when he revealed that his reaction to the news about the fuel tank had been &#8220;f**k me&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It will be the supplier whose issue it is who has agreed to redesign it, so it won&#8217;t actually cost the team anything,&#8221; the British billionaire added.<\/p>\n<p>It was assumed that the &#8216;supplier&#8217; in question was the external fuel tank maker, with rumours in Australia last weekend suggesting the desired capacity had been mistakenly recorded as litres instead of kilograms.<\/p>\n<p>But Nick Wirth, Virgin&#8217;s technical director but engaged through his separate Oxfordshire-based engineering group, admitted on Wednesday that it is the responsibility of his company Wirth Research to pay for the VR-01 redesign.<\/p>\n<p>Branson tried to put a positive spin on the situation in Melbourne.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It will actually give the car some practice time.\u00a0 Over the next five races we will learn more and more about the car,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p><em><span style=\"color: #999999;\">\u00a9 RIF|GMM<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wirth Research, as distinct from the team Virgin Racing or Manor Motorsport, is set to foot the estimated 1 million pounds sterling bill for redesigning the VR-01 F1 car. \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[3],"tags":[5262,5300,5261,5340,373,123,817,119,590],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3983"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3983"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3983\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3984,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3983\/revisions\/3984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}