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Booth happy with reliable car

Jerome D'Ambrosio had to drive on four consecutive days at the final test as Timo Glock recovered from an appendectomy © Sutton Images

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Virgin team principal John Booth has said that he is happier having a reliable car than a fast one at this stage of the season.

Having said that it wanted to regularly challenge for the second qualifying session when launching the MVR-02 in January, testing has not been so encouraging for the Virgin team, with the car looking well off the pace. Booth, however, said he was happy to improve slowly.

"What I do know is this - as a racing operation we're like night and day compared with 12 months ago," Booth said. "Last year we pushed too soon on car performance and it cost us in reliability terms as a result. This year we head to Melbourne with 4642kms of pre-season testing mileage under our belts and a much more reliable baseline to develop from." Booth admitted that the car was off the pace, but believes that the team is in a position to focus on getting the best possible result.

"We fully expect the first few races to be challenging in terms of outright pace, but I'm comfortable that prioritising reliability and strategy will help our big picture and we'll be in a much better place for the rest of the season. I'm looking forward to a more straightforward week of preparation leading up to the first race and to planning our opening race strategy in rather more calm circumstances than last year. Albert Park is a fantastic circuit that has produced some truly memorable racing and I hope we can do ourselves justice there."

The cancellation of the Bahrain Grand Prix has given all the teams an extra two weeks to prepare for the new season, and Booth said that it had worked out nicely to allow Timo Glock time to return to race fitness.

"It's very exciting to be heading to Australia this week to begin our preparations for the first race of the season. It is disappointing for all that Bahrain was postponed but all the signs are that this was the right decision. The fact is that had we raced in Bahrain last weekend, we would have been a man down in the cockpit as Timo would still have been recovering from his appendectomy. Thankfully he'll be fighting fit for next weekend, so the last minute change to the calendar has worked in our favour."

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.