Virgin Racing team principal John Booth is confident his outfit has learnt the lessons from their debut season.

The team, whose car development is split between Bicester and Dinnington in south Yorkshire, head into their second season in Formula 1 no longer the wide-eyed innocents.

Speaking ahead of Sunday's Australian Grand Prix, Booth said: “As a racing operation, we’re like night and day compared with 12 months ago.

“Last year we pushed too soon on car performance and it cost us in reliability terms.

“This year we head to Melbourne with 4,642kms of pre-season testing under our belts and a much more reliable baseline to develop from.”

Timo Glock is joined by new driver Jerome D’Ambrosio in the Virgin cars.

And Booth added: “We fully expect the first few races to be challenging in terms of outright pace.

“But I’m comfortable that prioritising reliability and strategy will help our big picture and we’ll be in a much better place for the rest of the season.”