The word on the street in banking circles is that the Virgin Racing team principal Alex Tai has been removed from office with immediate effect by the team’s board of directors. Tai has been the man heading the team for some months, although it was not announced until recently. The operation has yet to run a car. The team has also been reported to be struggling to find a title sponsor as potential companies are worried that any big involvement will be overshadowed by the publicity-hungry Virgin brand.
Our spies say that the job will be taken by Manor Racing’s Graeme Lowden, who was previously the Director of Racing. Lowden is a mechanical engineer who worked in the power industry before joining ABB. This led to an involvement in an ABB sponsorship in Indycars. Keen to be involved in the Internet revolution he created a company called J2C, in league with investors, including Alan Donnelly, who was a political figure from the north-east and subsequently became a consultant to the FIA. Lowden joined Manor in 2000 in a non-executive commercial position, while also running a new company called Nomad, after J2C went out of business.
Lowden was the primary force behind the move to F1 and knows a fair bit about motorsport. Compared to Tai, an airline pilot with no racing experience, Lowden seems a much more sensible choice for the team. We expect there to be confirmation of the news soon, along with news that Lloyds Bank is heavily involved in the team.
joeblogsf1 
Seems to be a difficult birth so far for at least 3 of the new teams….
Let’s try for the full set…what about Lotus, any upheaval or troubles there?
I’ve been told that a company called “Virgin Racing Ltd.” was only registered at Companies House two days AFTER Virgin’s official launch – and it’s registered to a horse trainer (hence a legitimate claim on ‘Racing’. Possible problem for the team?
Robert, the legal dispute Lotus are/were having with Force India concerning the wind tunnel model may nor may not qualify Lotus’ birth as difficult.
Ten teams on the grid will be fine, assuming “Lotus” (a cocky weed by any other name) will be there. But these others — effectively Mosley’s creations — don’t look any more convincing than their announcement last year. New blood is always to be preferred, but not if it merely muddies the track.
Branson is well known, over decades now, for doing every thing on the cheap..Ask his employees. and stupid share holders, who have lost money.
Hmmm is it such a great idea for a bank, particularly one mostly government owned, such as Lloyds to be getting involved in F1?
RBS dropped F1 like a bad habit last year, I thought banks would be quite wary of F1 for the next year or so.
Joe,
could you prepare short history repetition and tell people about connections of John Booth and Nick Wirth with certain Max Mosley?;) Then maybe we will all see clearly that nothing bad can happen to Manor – I mean NOTHING – with such ally.
You know, it really makes me wonder why some of them were granted the grid, but not Prodrive??
Care to share your insight Joe :-)?
It seems that Booth will be Team Principal.
Of more importance to UK taxpayers is the assertion that Lloyds Banking Group is ‘heavily involved in the team’.
As LBG is currently existing as a majority shareholding of us, the British taxpayer, does anyone feel that their involvement with a team in a sport that’s been dogged with allegations of overspend and waste is somewhat inappropriate?
If you look on http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk you can see both a Virgin Racing Ltd and Virgin F1 Ltd, both of which seem totally unrelated to Virgin themselves – Virgin F1 seems to be registered to the address of a pub in York!
Oddly, the Virgin Racing website lists their company details at http://www.virginracing.com/terms/ as
Virgin Racing
The School House
50 Brook Green
London
W6 7RR
Virgin Racing Limited is registered in England, registration number: 06661964
While Companies house have
VIRGIN RACING LIMITED
INGLEWOOD COACH HOUSE
OLD ROAD
STALYBRIDGE
CHESHIRE
ENGLAND
SK15 2RG
Company No. 07107172
However, if you put the 06661964 company number in to Companies house you get
MANOR GRAND PRIX RACING LIMITED
1 MANOR DRIVE
SHEFFIELD
S25 3QU
So it looks like the plan was to switch the name of Manor to Virgin Racing, but some kind of paperwork mistake has happened and either Virgin/Manor weren’t fast enough, or Companies house has processed the other request first.
Sounds as though young Richard is running everything from Necker Island via carrier pidgeon!
“Robert, the legal dispute Lotus are/were having with Force India concerning the wind tunnel model may nor may not qualify Lotus’ birth as difficult.”
I’d forgotten about that, true enough 😀
Branson has a history of announcing he’s going to do something, getting big publicity, and then not coming up with the money when it’s needed.
This looks suspiciously like the same pattern.
I believe that Virgin had a similar deal to Marlboro’s Ferrari deal. They underwrite the sponsorship – promising Manor 30M say in return for the right to name the team Virgin. The plan is then to sell sponsorship on for more than that, make a profit and have free publicity from F1.
I suspect that the sponsorship sale has raised less than 30M and Branson is now being asked to make up the shortfall. He’s refusing to put money in, so the Virgin guy is out as Team Principal, but Virgin still has it’s name on the team for no outlay.
The Manor guys are back in charge, but it was odd having a team principal from a sponsor in the first place. It is also odd that Alex Tai was removed by a non-executive board of directors. They protect the investors. Maybe Lloyds Bank are putting in more than planned to cover the shortfall in Virgin sponsorship?
Its all a bit of a mess – as most of the new teams seem to be. Bernie is now casting doubt on all of them – but he played a major part in their selection. Maybe he really doesn’t care whether they turn up or not. You have to wonder what the real motivation for selecting only Cosworth teams was.