Monthly Archives: November 2014

Daniel Ricciardo’s Brazilian GP was ended prematurely when he slowed with a front suspension failure on his Red Bull RB10.

He had been running in eighth place when he slowed on lap 39 with what the Aussie at first believed was a brake issue.

“It was a suspension failure,” said team boss Christian Horner. “Obviously we need to quarantine the parts and have a good look at whether any contact has been made earlier in the race, and understand what the cause is. He initially thought it was a disc failure, similar to what we had in practice in Belgium, but actually it was a front left suspension failure.”

Meanwhile Sebastian Vettel finished fifth after earlier losing spots to Kevin Magnussen and Fernando Alonso when he ran wide on the first lap.

“We were the head of the non-Mercedes group!,” said Horner. “Unfortunately there’s no trophy for that. I think today Sebastian got everything there was. He lost a bit of ground on the first lap at Turn 4, I think memories of the first lap a couple of years ago – he gave a little bit of extra spare around there, because he wasn’t sure where Magnussen was. I think his recovery thereafter was very good. His move on Kmi was very strong, out pit stops and strategy were very good, we just weren’t quick enough in sectors one and three.”

The administrator for Manor Grand Prix, the company behind Marussia F1, has confirmed that the organisation has ceased trading. The employees will be made redundant.

The news comes after a last ditch effort to save the team, including a visit by CEO Graeme Lowdon to the Austin paddock, failed to pay off.

The team is known to owe a substantial sum to Ferrari for its 2014 power unit supply – with some sources putting it at $28m.

A 2015 entry had been posted under the Manor name because failure to do would have made it even harder to save the team.

It’s understood that Andrey Cheglakov put £185m into the team over the last four years, and he is left with nothing to show for his investment.

A statement said: With the existing shareholder unable to provide the required level of funding and the Company’s senior management team subsequently being unable to bring in new investment, the Company was placed into administration to protect the best interests of the underlying businesses. The staff had been paid in full up until the end of October.

Regrettably since the appointment of administrators no investment has been secured in the limited time available to continue the Company in its present form. With no sustainable operational or financial structure in place to maintain the Group as a going concern, the joint administrators have now ceased trading Marussia F1 Team and unfortunately have had to make the remaining staff redundant.

“Whilst the team made significant progress during its relatively short period of operation, operating a F1 team requires significant ongoing investment,” said Geoff Rowley, joint administrator. “The Group was put into administration last month following a shortfall in on-going funding and the administration process provided a moratorium to allow for attempts to secure a long term viable solution for the Company within in a very limited time-frame. Sadly no solution could be achieved to allow for the business to continue in its current form. We would like to thank all the staff for their support during this difficult process.

“As joint administrators our immediate focus will be to assist staff who have lost their jobs and provide them with the necessary support to submit timely claims to the Redundancy Payments Service.

“The team will not be participating in the two further rounds of the 2014 championship remaining, in Sao Paulo and Abu Dhabi. The joint administrators will continue with their statutory duties to realise the assets of the business in the best interests of all the creditors.”

Esteban Gutierrez is trying to sort out his future after Sauber’s recent driver announcements left him high and dry.

While he is not one of the drivers with a disputed contract for next year, it’s clear that not only he was unable to conclude a deal with Monisha Kaltenborn, but also that his Mexican backers are extremely frustrated with how things have unfolded at the Swiss team. In essence they lost a bidding war, although there are suggestions that’s not the only reason for their disappointment in Sauber’s management.

“After long talks with the teams and negotiations and everything we didn’t reach an agreement,” said Gutierrez. “That’s the way it is, it’s quite disappointing not to have – yet – a seat for next season, although my priority is to maintain here in F1. Parallel to that we’ve been working on other things, and hopefully that can work out.”

Asked by this writer how long he had know that he was likely to miss out he said: “I knew quite a while ago. Honestly when you work with people for so many years, you know them. You know the body language, you know different things. We were anyway in negotiations, they were interested. It was just not reasonable for us to continue.

“The sponsors are backing me, and I really feel grateful with the, because we’ve been working together through this process. The sponsors are very motivated, some of them have been willing to do different things. They are all together, the same as it is, or even better. Just the deal here didn’t work out – something which is not reasonable, you obviously don’t go forward with it. As simple as that. It’s just too much for what you can ask. It has to be a win-to-win situation.”

Gutierrez admits that F1 opportunities will be hard to find.

“At the moment it’s quite slim. There is probably only one seat available, and we’ve been working on that, and also on other things, which probably require a bit more patience and some risk. We shall share that as soon as we have something concrete.”

Asked if he might end up as a third driver somewhere he said: “We are working on different alternatives.”