Richard Branson: “We went into it with our eyes open…”

Branson expects extra outside sponsorship next year

Richard Branson appeared in Singapore and insisted that he’s still fully behind the F1 team that bears the Virgin name, despite its difficult baptism this year.

Asked by this blog how hard it had been to go from regularly celebrating wins under the podium with Brawn to being at the back of the field, he denied that it had been a challenge for him.

“It actually hasn’t been hard at all,” he said. “It’s great fun. As I said at the beginning of the season we knew we were going to be the underdogs, we went into it with our eyes open. And it’s fun building a new team from scratch. There are quite a lot of other people who’d love to be able to get new teams in who have been turned down. The team are delivering what they promised on reliability and so on. The amount of money that this team is spending is £15m less than Lotus – maybe £20m less – so to be almost matching them car for car is great. And the reliability has been better.

“I would have had to have been a little bit foolish to assume that we were going to have a new team and we were going to start winning in F1. It takes a number of years to build a new team from scratch. It’s been fun. I’ve actually had just as much fun watching if we could beat Lotus – I think it’s just about as much fun!”

Branson insisted that his company was getting a good return on its investment in terms of exposure.

“We didn’t spend much money last year, and we haven’t spent a lot of money last year. The Virgin brand is strong, and it attracts other sponsors and people want to be involved with the Virgin cars, so it’s worked well for us both years. Obviously the coverage was more when you’re winning, but we were just ridiculously lucky last year. You don’t get many of those in a life time.

“The gap is closing. We’re not far behind the two old teams that are just above us now in speed. So we’re certainly getting closer. We’ll see what happens next year.”

Branson said that his own branding might be less overt next season, but only if the space is required by other sponsors.

“These guys seem to be doing quite well on the sponsorship for next year, and if they do that then more space will be taken up by outside sponsors, but that’s a positive thing. We obviously hope to keep Virgin on the back of the car. But ultimately it’s up to these guys, how many sponsors they get. I would very much hope it continues to be known as the Virgin Racing team.”

He also played down the importance of 10^th place in the World Championship, and the extra funding associated with it.

“Nobody’s expecting it or budgeting for it, and even if you got the 10^th place you wouldn’t get the money for another couple of years. You’ve got to have 10^th place over two seasons in order to get that money. We’d certainly like a lot of rain [in the coming races] because it gives us a lot better chance of getting it!”