First blood to Virgin in new teams race

Virgin boss Sir Richard Branson hailed his team's true grit after it overcame assorted mechanical woes to qualify highest of Formula 1's new entrants.While the Hispania squad has been finding its feet this weekend with an untested car, Virgin and Lotus have been closely matched for pace even as they have struggled with operational and technical glitches.Timo Glock won the bragging rights for the John Booth-run outfit by pipping Lotus standard-bearer Jarno Trulli by 0.1s to annex 19th on the Bahrain grid.Glock's time put him 2.7s adrift of the slowest of the established runners (Jaime Alguersuari's Toro Rosso) and just over five seconds off the Q1 benchmark time set by Fernando Alonso's Ferrari.It's great to be the best of the new teams here today and I'm very happy with what we have achieved, said Glock.This is a team result and a credit to everyone who has worked so hard in really difficult circumstances to get the best out of our first race package. To also be just 2.7 seconds away from teams with many more years of experience is even better.We have a big mountain to climb but we go into our debut race having achieved our first target and I think this will give us the momentum we need to keep on pushing.Rookie team-mate Lucas di Grassi faced an especially difficult task after missing almost the whole of final practice, so did well to qualify within a second of Glock in 22nd place.Branson, who is present in Bahrain to watch his team's debut, said he was proud of the way it had coped with adversity.Both the car and the team are in their infancy and like all infants some of our first steps may falter, he said.But unlike other teams when things go wrong we won't be throwing our toys out of the pram, we'll pick ourselves up and get right back into the playground!That's exactly what the team did here in Bahrain today after the setbacks they experienced over the weekend.Not only did we qualify as the fastest of the new teams; we came so close to the more established teams and on a fraction of their budget.This not only shows the technical brilliance of Nick Wirth and his team but true grit!Make sure you don't miss out on taking part in our new live chat feature on itv.com/f1 during Sunday's grand prix