Glock: Big budgets aren't essential in F1
Glock thinks quality is far more important than quantity
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Monday, 04, Jan 2010 01:56
By Adam Leveridge
Timo Glock is adamant Virgin Racing doesn't need a large budget to be successful in formula one.
The 27-year old German signed a contract with Richard Branson's squad, which has vowed to run on a limited budget of £40 million per year, after Toyota announced its immediate withdrawal just days after the 2009 season finale in Abu Dhabi and he is confident Virgin's ambition and passion will bring the team success.
"On the technical side, their plans are substantially different from all the other F1 teams," Glock told the Official F1 website.
"Their whole programme has been run via CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics), which is an immense factor in terms of limiting cost.
"And at the end of the day I don't think it takes 600 employees to run a successful F1 team.
"I think success can be achieved with a far smaller headcount and much smaller budgets than the teams are used to at the moment.
"I saw during Toyota's final stages that it is possible to run on a smaller budget and to increase a budget from 40 to 70 million pounds is much easier than to trim back from 300 to 150 million or even to 100 million."
Glock said that other teams have demonstrated that success is determined by quality, rather than quantity.
"My first thought was very pragmatic," said Glock.
"I thought that it would be much easier for me to remember all the names of my team mates as there were a lot less people working there, and that due to the smaller size of the facility everything is much more compact.
"We have all seen that success has nothing to do with the size of the factory but depends instead on the quality of the people and how the team is structured."
The 27-year old, who was teamed with Jarno Trulli at Toyota, said he was attracted to Virgin by the prospect of being the team's number one driver and he said he is keen to begin preparations for the 2010 season.
"I am really looking forward to it," explained Glock.
"In fact that was one of my reasons for choosing Virgin Racing, because I was promised the number one position and the team will be structured around me.
"This will be a completely new experience for me and will add further experience to my CV.
"In this respect I have to say that I've learned a lot at Toyota over the years and feel ready for the challenge."