Well, they say time flies and after an exhaustive nine month programme of car design and development, team-building and pre-season testing, Virgin Racing’s Grand Prix debut has finally arrived. The 45-strong race team are up and running in the Kingdom of Bahrain for the opening round of the 2010 FIA Formula One World Championship.

After three weeks of pre-season testing in Jerez and Barcelona Timo Glock spent much of last week at Virgin Racing’s technical base in Bicester, UK, driving the Sakhir track on the simulator. He has now reached terra firma in Bahrain with the aim of leaving no stone unturned in his quest to ensure he is physically and mentally prepared for the challenges of the week ahead.

“Pre-season testing has been pretty eventful for our team,” the German driver explained. “We saw some very positive signs of the potential of the car and the team, but we also experienced some reliability issues and too much rain, the combination of which prevented us from maximising our track time. However, if I stand back and look at what we have built together in the space of only nine months, we should all feel pretty proud.”

“Here we are, heading into our first race and I’m very excited. We’re as ready as we can be. We’re a small team but we have the resources and people to keep building something special together and that is what we must all keep in mind as we progress. We have some great team members at Virgin Racing who know what it takes to be quick and what we have to do to get to where we want to be. Our objective remains to be the best of the new teams and that particular race starts this weekend.”