Virgin Racing’s debut Grand Prix preparations got underway in Bahrain today when after another long night of preparation the Sakhir Circuit really tested the race team’s mettle.

Taking to the track for their debut race weekend appearance this morning, the emphasis was on a slow steady start to the long list of set-up and tyre evaluation items that defines the Friday program.

Once they were up and running, rookie racer Lucas di Grassi was able to get some reasonable running under his belt. He ended the day in 21^st place on the leaderboard  with a best time of 2:02.188 after a total of 21 laps.

“Although a tough day, we actually had a good session this afternoon and got through a lot of things. For me everything is new. I wasn’t able to run this morning so the afternoon laps were key to my performance and helping us get started this weekend. The mechanics did a great job running the car and everything seems fine so far. Now we just need to work on car performance, which we clearly haven’t been able to optimise at the moment.”

Meanwhile, teammate Timo Glock was confined to the garage for most of the afternoon session due to a gearbox issue, the former Toyota racer eventually ending the day 20^th overall after his limited running meant that he was unable to improve on a lap time of 2:02.037.

“Today hasn’t been the start to the weekend that we hoped for,” he said. “We always knew it was going to be tough but we’ve had too many technical problems which have prevented me getting track time today. We already had two tough nights but we have another one ahead, I’m afraid, to get us to a point where we can feel confident going into the rest of the weekend.”

“On the positive side, if we can get on top of the issues we have we’ll be in an okay place because with the brief amount of running I have had, I can see that the car isn’t bad. I hope we can be ready to get some proper work done tomorrow.”