Timo Glock has admitted that Virgin is set to have a difficult start to the 2011 season.
The team had hoped to take a step up after an uncompetitive debut in 2010, but the new MVR-02 has looked significantly slower than the Team Lotus car in recent testing.
"I have to say our laptimes do not look good," admitted German Glock, who will also start the season at less than 100 per cent after recent appendix surgery.
"Compared to Lotus, we are lagging behind quite a bit on the long runs.
"We are definitely a bit off where we wanted to be and I can only hope that our technical director Nick Wirth can give us a good car for the fourth race in Turkey," he told spox.com.