Ross Brawn, the team principal, was formerly the team principal for the Honda Racing F1 Team. In December 2008, Honda announced it was withdrawing from Formula 1 activity. On March 6, 2009, Honda announced the sale of the entire shares of the Honda Racing F1 Team (HRF1) to Ross Brawn.

I have always said I would love for Virgin to be involved in Formula One and I am thrilled that we will be entering this fantastic sport with people as skilled as Ross Brawn and the Brawn GP team. Over the years Virgin has had the great honour of partnering with technical geniuses and I truly believe that Ross Brawn is to F1 what Burt Ratan is to space travel with Virgin Galactic.

—Sir Richard Branson

Reuters reported that Branson told a news conference at the season-opening Australian Grand Prix that he had set two preconditions for entering the sport. The first was for the costs of competing to come down, and the second was that the sport should spearhead a clean fuel revolution.

Branson said they had funded a company called Gevo who had come up with a clean fuel for Formula One that could be branded Virgin Fuel and would perform as well as current so-called ‘dirty fuel’.

“Over the next few months we will be trying to talk to Formula One and the various car companies and see if we can have this fuel introduced as the fuel that Formula One uses,’ he added. “This sport can go from being a slightly polluting sport to a clean sport. I look forward to working within the sport to try and change it. Obviously we are also trying to work to create a clean fuel for our airplanes so when people actually go to the sport they can do so without any feeling of guilt whatsoever.”

Gevo was founded in 2005 by Drs. Frances Arnold, Matthew Peters and Peter Meinhold of the California Institute of Technology. Gevo’s Integrated Fermentation Technology (GIFT) enables the production of isobutanol and hydrocarbons from retrofitted ethanol plants. Gevo’s technology enables the cost effective, practical production of renewable hydrocarbons such as isooctene and isooctane for the gasoline market, renewable jet fuel and renewable diesel blendstocks. In addition, Gevo’s technology enables the production of a wide variety of chemicals such as isobutylene and paraxylene from renewable resources. (Earlier post.)