grumpyf1

Who was dead last in 2009? You're thinking HRT, right? Wrong. It was Virgin. If you score no points in a season, your ultimate placing is decided upon highest placed finishes, and number of finishes. To be worse than HRT (who, lest we forget, barely even made it to the first race) is pretty miserable. One thing last year's car had going for it was a fantastic paint job. They seem to have forgotten that this year, so let's hope they've remembered to include a decent sized fuel tank, and a vast increase in reliability. Timo Glock is a pretty good driver, so he'll be hoping for a better year too. He's partnered this year by new kid Jerome D'Ambrosio. You know... that guy? No? Me neither. So Timo will be the one the team look to to develop the car. If they actually know how to do that. With HRT, these are the guys most likely to score no points and find themselves bottom of the heap. They'll be hoping Hispania make it to the first race again this year,...

Hardly the top seat in F1, but some chap called Ambrosia has recently bagged a drive with Virgin for 2011. Actually, his name is Jerome D'Ambrosio, but I hereby lay claim to copyright on the following punning back-page headlines: "D'Ambrosio is cream of the crop" and.... er... no, that's it. Still - it was fun while it lasted. Jerome will be the first F1 driver from Belgium since Bertrand Gachot, and the 25 year old GP2 driver's appointment has the unfortunate effect of issuing Lucas Di Grassi with a P45. It's tough at the bottom. (Bending the speaker cones tonight is the They Might Be Giants download-only album from 2000 "Long Tall Weekend". In 2000 downloading an album was a) highly unusual b) likely to take about a week.)

Irish Formula 1 driver Tim O'Glock has re-signed to the Virgin team for 2011. Erm. That's about it really. I just wanted to do the Irish joke again. Hopefully, next year the team might remember to do him a few technical favours, like designing-in a big enough fuel tank etc. Must be a tough gig for Timo; Toyota were nearly there when they decided to pull the plug, and I don't think anyone realistically expect Virgin to be fighting in the midfield (let along the front) any time soon. Still, you never know - Luck of the Irish and all that... (Spot of the Eurythmics tonight - the "Peace" album from 99)

Virgin launched their car today, and without a shadow of a doubt, it's the best looking one so far. Unusually (in comparison with the other teams who have debuted their cars this week), they don't have that shark fin thing on the rear of the engine cover, and the nose is a lot more pointy. Yes, that is a technical term. Gorgeous livery too. Pre-pre a go-go then! First of the new entrants, Virgin haven't bothered with the old-fashioned methods and their car hasn't seen the inside of a wind tunnel, having been entirely designed using CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics, or "How slippery and aerodynamic is our car then?" to you and me) on a particularly big laptop, or something. So predicting how they'll go is nigh-on impossible. So I won't try. Good luck to them though - I liked their press conference; all black leather jackets and jeans. Timo Glock was pretty handy in the Toyota last year and raced well, when the car would let him. His career hasn't r...