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Sir Richard Branson has insisted that Virgin Racing will be in Formula 1 for many years to come.

The sport’s commercial rights supremo Bernie Ecclestone suggested that one of the new teams might struggle to see out the rest of the 2010 season – but Virgin Group chairman Branson denied his team’s future was under threat.

“I'm surprised Bernie said that,” said Branson. “He might know something about the other new teams that I don't, but this Virgin will go all the way to the end of the season and hopefully for many seasons to come – we certainly would like to.

“It's actually just as fun being one of the new guys on the block as winning [Virgin sponsored championship-winning Brawn last season]. It's a different kind of experience. If we'd stuck with Brawn for another year we would be £50m worse off, and they're not winning – so supporting and building a new team from scratch is very exciting.

“We've got to bridge the gap [to the front]. It's a lot, but is to be expected of a new team. It's been a challenging start and there will be technical problems, but even the teams that are spending £300m on their cars have technical problems.”

Branson continued: “It was incredibly pleasing to see both our cars finish [in Spain], and to do that within five races is pretty good going. If the team continue the kind of progress they've made to-date, we'll be delighted and we'll continue to support it – and there's no reason why we shouldn't.

“We went into this with our eyes open, and we plan to stick with it as long as they can get other sponsors on board as well, which they are managing to do. It's great that other people see the excitement of sponsoring a new team, and are joining us to see the team build over the next few years.

“Although this team is running on less money than all the other teams, it's still a lot of money and we want to spread it out among a number of people.”