Bernie Ecclestone has confirmed that the return of Marussia has been blocked by its rivals according to an article in the Independent by Christian Sylt.
The team ground to a spectacular halt when it went into administration at the end of October, ceased trading in November and missed the last three races of the season. Most of its 170 staff were made redundant at the beginning of November and the following month its administrators FRP Advisory held a public auction of its assets. It even sold its factory in Banbury which was bought by Gene Haas, the American entrepreneur who is launching a new team next year.
As Pitpass revealed in December, Marussia made a net loss of £29.2m in just the first eight months of last year and owes a total of £31.4m with the biggest creditor being Ferrari which is due £16.6m for supplying engines to the team. Despite these hurdles, Marussia's management was reportedly hopeful the team would be rescued.
Hopes were raised last month when FRP cancelled the second auction of the team's remaining equipment. A bigger boost came on Wednesday when FRP announced that the team expected to get funding from new investors so that it could race this year. Leading the investment group is former Sainsbury's boss Justin King, according to Mark Kleinman, the city editor of Sky News.
Kleinman of course is the man who revealed that Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation was in talks about forming a consortium to buy F1. He also reported that former Marks & Spencer boss Stuart Rose had been approached about becoming F1's chairman and that Lloyds was in talks about buying a big stake in Silverstone. They are all great stories but none actually came to pass.
King's previous connection to F1 was as a mooted successor to Ecclestone which is another rumour that hit the wall. It was first reported in the Financial Times in late 2012 and just over a year later Ecclestone put the brakes on it in an interview with Pitpass. It looks like his latest F1 foray has bitten the dust even sooner.
As Marussia has been in limbo for the past three months it has missed valuable development time on a 2015 car so it planned to use an updated version of last year's model. This would save time and would also cost a lot less than designing a new car from scratch as its rivals have done. It didn't sit easy with them.
The decision about whether to allow Marussia to use its 2014 car was made yesterday by the Strategy Group which comprises Ecclestone, the FIA and six leading teams (Ferrari, Red Bull, McLaren, Mercedes, Williams and Force India). "They wanted to come in with last year's car and it didn't get accepted. It needed all the teams to agree and there were three or four of them that didn't agree," says Ecclestone.
If they had agreed it could have been a slippery slope. "The trouble was that you can't do these things for one team, you have got to do it for everybody," says Ecclestone adding that "maybe one or two of the other teams would have liked to use last year's car." It wasn't the only reason for Marussia being given a red light.
Last year Marussia earned an estimated £34m for finishing ninth but if the team fails to race in 2014 the prize money will be handed to its rivals. "The money that they should have got gets distributed amongst the teams that are racing. That's a pretty good reason I suppose," says Ecclestone.
Marussia's departure leaves nine teams with several understood to be in financial difficulty so the additional income will help to secure their future. In short, it benefits teams which are alive and kicking. In contrast, Marussia died back in November so would need to be resurrected to benefit from using its 2014 car this year.
Marussia was the last survivor of the three new teams launched in 2010. The first to go was Spanish outfit HRT which closed its doors at the end of 2012. Next came Caterham which went into administration days before Marussia.
All three of these teams, and every other which has gone bust in the past decade, has finished at least one season outside the top ten leaving them with no prize money. It indicates that one way to prevent an F1 exodus in future is to limit the grid to ten teams. With only nine outfits confirmed to race this year they can at least rest easy that they are all on track for a pay-day.
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