Just realized no one has started a 2014 thread for Marussia.
DSQ of Ricciardo has now bump Chilton up to 13th. This could potentially help secure them the 10th position at the end of the year. No good news for Caterham for sure.
The ferrari engine is very reliable indeed. I am not sure if it is Marussia has move up or Caterham moving downidfx wrote:Finished the race without problems. The team has evolved, this Ferrari engine is pretty consistent.
To be honest, I think if Kobayashi didn't have the mechanical failure, he'd homed that Caterham in to a good spot. Koba is gold, too bad the green machine didn't prove reliable, neither for ericsson.CHT wrote:The ferrari engine is very reliable indeed. I am not sure if it is Marussia has move up or Caterham moving downidfx wrote:Finished the race without problems. The team has evolved, this Ferrari engine is pretty consistent.
Agree. The other team with Ferrari engine was Sauber.CHT wrote:Australia GP is actually a great success for Marussia. Considering the limited testing they had, to have 2 cars finishing the race and yet securing the 13th position is almost like winning.
On the other hand, what else could be expected if the main investor of the Marussia F1 Team and Marussia Motors — Andrew Cheglakov — a man who in the 1990s to enter the Russian market game console Dendy, who was a Chinese clone of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) aka Famicom (FAMIly COMputer). During the first three years he sold 6 million items at over $90 each (not counting illegal cartridges), with a very good margin… After all, Nintendo did not get from this.Away from the circuits, however, things are happening with the news from Russia that the Marussia Motors company is shutting down by its owner Andrej Cheglakov as the management of the firm, led by Nikolai Fomenko, has failed to find the money needed push ahead with its plans to build supercars. It seems that Cheglakov has got bored of waiting and spending. This creates a problem for the Formula 1 team because its reason to exist has just disappeared. It could exist simply as a racing operation, but that would require a lot of money. The team has some cash from the Formula One group and from Max Chilton and there seems to be a deal with Ferrari that pays for Jules Bianchi, but beyond that sponsorship is thin. And it is hard to find when you are at the back of the grid.
The logical step forward from here would be for Cheglakov to find a suitable new owner. The racing team is a legal entity called Manor Grand Prix Racing Ltd. This belongs to a holding company called Manor Holdco Ltd, which in turn was owned by a Luxembourg firm called Marussia Lux SA, a subsidiary of Marussia Motors. It seems that this structure has now been changed with Manor Holdco having been passed to a new company, registered in Ireland, called Marussia Communications Ltd. Thus it is no longer directly linked to Marussia Motors but is still under the ownership of Cheglakov. It seems that there are some people out there who are willing to buy the team but for the moment there are only rumours about who the new owner might be.
According to Bernie Ecclestone, the FIA is about to announce that there will be two new teams in 2015 (or 2016 more likely) and it is bizarre for either one to go on, given the scale of investment required to get even to the level of Marussia or Caterham. It would be wiser for the new owners to buy up smaller teams with infrastructure and people, rather than trying to do it all themselves. This depends largely on the price, but at the moment there is little real value in back of the grid teams so unless the owners want to write off their investments, it makes no sense to quit unless there really is no way to fund things, in which case any sale would simply be to avoid debts.
Gene Haas has plans to have Ferrari engines and to have Dallara build his chassis but he would be wiser perhaps to simply buy Marussia and let the people running the show get on with it.