The recent Volcanic ash cloud which has shutdown western Europe’s airspace could impact the Virgin team hardest.
The F1 Times reported back in March that the fuel tank in the VR-01 was too small to finish a race distance, which led to a £1 million re-design and re-build of the monocoque after the FIA granted special dispensation from the homologation rule.
The new chassis and monocoque were meant to debut at the Spanish GP in three weeks time, however the recent grounding of all flights into the UK, and much of Europe has left the team and their tons of freight stranded in China, along with the majority of the grid.
If they can’t get the cars back at the end of this week at the latest, the Yorkshire based team won’t have the necessary timeframe to make the changes. Therefore, the cars will have to go to Spain with the same capacity tank as they have raced in the opening four rounds.
Any changes to the monocoque will have to be delayed even further, as the Monaco GP is just a week after the Spanish GP. A two-week break between Monaco and Turkey might give the team sufficient time.
Despite the possible delays, Virgin have only managed to finish one race, thanks to Lucas di Grassi in Malaysia. Reliability seems to be of more importance than fuel capacity.
