John Booth hits back to Bernie Ecclestone’s constant criticism of the 2010 Formula One newcomers, claiming his comments are ‘destabilising’ and that they could ‘do great damage’ ahead of this week’s Belgian Grand Prix.

Booth and USF1 co-founder Peter Windsor both claim that Ecclestone’s recent comments that the new teams are ‘out of their depth’ is a ploy to scare potential sponsors away, thus making it virtually impossible for them to survive in F1.

But Virgin’s team principal believes that his team actually is further ahead than what he anticipated considering it is their maiden campaign in the top flight of Motorsport.

Earlier in the year, Ecclestone expressed his opinion on a number of separate occasions that some of the new teams will not make it to Abu Dhabi for the season closer, predicting at least two will drop out due to the recent financial woes.

To make matters worse, last month the Formula One Management (FOM) chief executive went even further by claiming that the two teams to which Ecclestone had been referring to (Virgin and Hispania) ‘really shouldn’t be there’ and that they would be happy to see a return to just 20 cars on the starting grid. Booth described these remarks as ‘destabilising’ as he said:

“I was not particularly pleased, because comments like that for a team like ours can do great damage. It is difficult for us at the moment, as it is for other teams, and for all the new teams.”

“If you look at what we have built up so far, it’s not all bad. In F1 there have been probably 30 or 40 new teams, some of which never qualified for a race – but we are there at the start of every race and, step-by-step, we are getting closer. We are where we expected we would be, and maybe even a bit further ahead than that.”

Now they have to prove to Bernie that they do deserve to be here and this weekend in Belgium they will have the perfect opportunity to do this.

Over the last three weeks they have been able to make updates on their car in the hope that they can become more competitive with the other mid-runners.

In the last Grand Prix both Timo and Lucas finished, but there was a sense of under achievement as much was hoped from a very successful qualifying session. They out qualified the Lotus team for the first time and now believe they can assert themselves as the best of the new teams.

Now Virgin travel to Belgium to what is the longest circuit on the F1 calendar, Spa-Francorchamps. With new upgrades they should be looking to finish ahead of their rivals and maybe even push the mid-runners.

But their biggest incentive this weekend is to finally shut up Mr Ecclestone’s constant sniping of the Formula One new comers by showing what a rookie can do and prove they are worthy of competing with the big boys.

Let’s now hope they don’t have a disastrous weekend, as all it will do is fuel Bernie’s burning desire to remove Virgin from F1. And no one, except a posh man from Suffolk, wants that.

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