F1: Virgin Man Tai Set To Head Manor GP

Formula 1

F1: Virgin Man Tai Set To Head Manor GP

Virgin Galactic Employee Alex Tai is the new CEO of Manor Grand Prix...

Adam Cooper | http://www.speedtv.com | Posted September 08, 2009 Balen (BEL)

Alex Tai is the new CEO of Manor Grand Prix as Virgin will leave Brawn and become the title sponsor of Manor in 2010. (Photo: Virgin Galactic)

Virgin employee Alex Tai is the new Chief Executive Officer of fledgling F1 team Manor Grand Prix, SPEEDtv.com can reveal. Sources suggest that he will also hold the title of team principal, leaving team founder John Booth in the role of sporting director.

As has already been reported, Virgin is to leave Brawn and become the title sponsor of Manor next year.

Tai has been at several races this year, including the recent Belgian GP. He is a childhood friend of soccer player turned Hollywood tough guy Vinnie Jones, and spent some of his youth on an RAF base in Germany, where his father worked on Phantom fast jets.

He trained as an RAF pilot, and later flew Boeing 747s for Virgin Atlantic before becoming a key associate of boss Richard Branson and looking after Virgin special projects. Most notably was made Chief Operating Officer of Virgin Galactic, the company that is offering a taste of space travel to the super rich. He is expected to pilot the first commercial space flight.

Although Virgin has promoted many different brands via Brawn GP this year, Tai’s involvement suggests that there could be a particularly close connection between Virgin’s F1 and space projects. The Galactic brand was heavily promoted by the Brawn team at the Bahrain GP, where Niki Lauda offered to become a pilot and Rubens Barrichello was presented with a ticket.

Since then Virgin has announced that it has sold 32% of Galactic to Aabar Investments, a company ultimately owned by the Abu Dhabi government, and which also has a 9% stake in Daimler and thus Mercedes.

Bearing in mind the presence of the Abu Dhabi GP on the schedule it would perhaps be logical for Aabar to also get involved in the F1 project, so it will be interesting to see if that happens. Another Abu Dhabi group already has a shareholding in Ferrari.

Manor has also been looking for investment from Saudi Arabia.

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