Branson puts his stamp on F1

Just five minutes with tearaway tycoon Sir Richard Branson is all it takes for him to have a listener agog and open-mouthed with surprise, shock or sheer amazement.

And that's exactly the way it was this week when Branson revealed he had put his brand, but not much of his billions of pounds fortune, behind the brand new Virgin Racing Formula One team. "We scoured the world trying to find a woman driver," was his bombshell over lunch in London, the precursor to his launch of the Grand Prix team with the smallest budget of them all.

When the cumulative gasps of astonishment had faded Branson, who cleverly reaped £65 millions (Dh387.24 million) worth of exposure for his meagre £2 million (Dh 11.91 million) outlay with the champions Brawn GP last season, added: "We really did seriously consider having a woman driver.

"And we tried very hard to find one. But in the end we decided there wasn't one good enough to take on the guys. But this is an exhausting and very physically demanding sport and there isn't a female driver out there who could do it."

The only one who possibly could match the men is IndyCar winner and glamour girl Danica Patrick, a proven fearless front-runner in the madcap melee that is single-seater racing in the US.

She had been earmarked by the other new team on the grid, USF1, as well as being eyed by Branson but opted instead for a stayover in her American homeland to continue her spectacular racing career.

Branson's love of the bizarre and his penchant for publicity was quelled in his enforced boiled-down sense of responsibility and the likely embarrassment that could have been provoked with a woman behind the wheel of his 220 mph Virgin Racing car.

Instead, much to the relief of the team's frontline bosses and pit-wall planners, CEO Alex Tai got his way with the brilliant German youngster Timo Glock, ex-Toyota, as his main hope. "Danica in IndyCars is brilliant," said Tai, "but driving an F1 car is a different discipline with difficult demands and we felt she wouldn't be right as good and as quick as she has proved herself to be in the US".

Branson admits he is hooked on F1 - and has been totally rivetted by its global appeal since his tie-up with Brawn GP. "And I'm going to be around the F1 scene for at least another two years."

The author is an expert on motorsport based in England.