Richard Branson’s Virgin Active chain expands – but his Formula One team flounders

Sir Richard Branson’s gym chain Virgin Active might be expanding in the Sydney market, but his new Formula One team, called Virgin Racing, has another embarrassing weekend at the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne.

Both Virgin Racing cars were forced to start from pit lane in yesterday’s race after a problem with their fuel systems forced the Virgin mechanical crew into some major changes on the eve of the race.

While the pit lane start allowed the two cars to avoid some of the early race crashes, things didn’t improve very much.

Driver Lucas di Grassi withdrew at the halfway mark of the race with mechanical problems, with his stablemate Timo Glock pulling out with only 70% of the race complete.

That means Virgin Racing, which launched in earlier this month at the first Grand Prix in Bahrain, is still to actually finish an F1 race.

The Virgin team’s poor performance in the Australian race was only part of a disastrous weekend for Branson’s team.

Late last week it emerged that the company would need to redesign parts of its car after engineers built a fuel tank that was not big enough to allow the cars to finish some of the longer races of the season – including the Melbourne race.

According to a report in Britain’s The Times newspaper, Branson is furious at the problem, although he did tell reporters in Melbourne on Saturday that is believes other teams could be in the same predicament due to a last-minute change to lower-density fuel.

The Virgin Racing entry was designed entirely virtually, rather than in a wind tunnel as is traditional with F1 race cars.

The computer design may have helped the team cut down on costs, but a costly string of technical glitches is likely to force some very expensive repair work in the coming months.

Virgin technical director Nick Wirth did his best to put a brave face on the weekend.

“We leave here yet to finish our first Grand Prix but with clear signs that our performance is improving.”

There is better news for Branson on the Virgin Active front, with the chain set to open its first gym in the Sydney CBD later this year.

The company, which has health centres in the Sydney suburb of Frenchs Forest and in the Melbourne CBD, eventually wants to have 20 centres around Australia.

Virgin Active has 170 clubs worldwide with over 900,000 members.