FEBRUARY 23, 2010

Virgin Racing names Anydy Soucek as reserve driver

2009 Formula 2 champion Andy Soucek has been named as Virgin Racing's reserve driver for the 2010 season, and will attend races with the team.

The 24-year-old Spaniard has been trying to land an F1 seat, and was previously linked to the Campos team. Soucek replaces Alvaro Parente, who lost the reserve driver role when the Portuguese Tourism Board failed to fulfill it's commitments to the young Portuguese driver.

Soucek said, "I am thrilled to be joining Virgin Racing. This role offers me a great opportunity to prepare myself for the Formula One environment, which is naturally where my longer-term ambitions lie. I look forward to learning from Timo and Lucas as well as soaking up as much information as possible from engineering meetings and time on the simulator. I would like to thank John Booth and Nick Wirth in particular for the faith they have shown in me at this stage in my career. It is exciting and very motivating to be part of a new structure in such a challenging sport and I hope that my experience can contribute a great deal to the development of the car and team in order to help us progress as quickly as possible."

Team Principal John Booth said, "We are delighted to welcome Andy Soucek to Virgin Racing. He had a very good season in Formula 2 last year and a positive F1 test with Williams. He is certainly someone we have been keeping a close eye on as we believe he has a great deal of potential. We expect him to be a real asset to our development programme with the VR-01 and at the same time he provides the experience we need should he be required to deputise for one of the race drivers at short notice. We are pleased to have finalised our driver line-up and we look forward to having Andy alongside us inBarcelona later this week so he can spend some valuable familiarisation time with the team."