Marussia lost money in failed Abu Dhabi comeback

F1 Fanatic Round-up

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In the round-up: Marussia came close to returning to F1 in the final race of last season only to lose more money when a potential investor withdrew their funding.

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Marussia F1 Team Lost $45,000 In Bid To Race At Final Grand Prix (Forbes)

“‘On Tuesday 18 November 2014, I received a commitment by a prospective investor to inject sufficient cash into MGPR to enable the team to race in Abu Dhabi,’ says Geoff Rowley, one of the joint administrators at FRP. ‘To enable this to happen, the race team had to be reformed and arrangements made to travel to the race. A significant amount of work was carried out over a 24 hour period by both MGPR’s staff and the joint administrators; however, ultimately the prospective investors were not able to provide sufficient funds.'”

Tech staff exits caused Lotus woe (Autosport)

Alan Permane: “Losing James [Allison] was a big hit. We lost Dirk [de Beer], our head of aerodynamics. We lost our head of CFD.”

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Comment of the day

Saturday’s Caption Competition attracted well over one hundred responses including some particularly good ones from Phil Curry, Pat Ruadh and Matt90.

However my favourite was this one from @Jethro:

After seeing Franck Montagny’s media profile rise, Hamilton admits to “trying grass” in his GP2 days.

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On this day in F1

Five years ago today the Tribunal de Grande Instance in France overturned Flavio Briatore’s lifetime ban from participating in motor sport which had been imposed on him by the FIA following his involvement in ‘Crashgate’.

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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20 comments on “Marussia lost money in failed Abu Dhabi comeback”

  1. Interesting points from the Twitter video. He’s right, the more designers exploit and master interpreting the rules the less slack designers get the years to come due to teams trying to cap their advantage. Seems like a natural, and strangely defective series of events.

    Would so be interesting to see what some designers can produce given creative freedom; monsters of all shapes and sizes.

    1. In really going to miss the 2014 U-shaped Mercedes nose. I thought it was a clever and elegant interpretation of the 2014 regulations.

      1. I think the Merc nose is very very close to being ok, I think just a small adjustment will be required.

      2. If scarbs was that good, he’d be working for an F1 team……..
        Enough said!

        1. It is easier to look at things that others have built and explain how they work. It is harder to build something yourself while understanding what you are doing. Everything in F1 car works and has a reason to be there. If scarbs doesn’t understand why there is something on the car he has all the time in the world to learn how it works. But somewhere someone put that idea on paper, calculated and understood why and how it works and then built it. Put it on the car and tested if it does work like his/her calculations predict.

          1. It is easier to look at things that others have built and explain how they work.

            So true.

            I understand, and could explain in laymans terms, most aspects of a wide variety of technology, including engines, electronics, and many mechanical systems. Given the resources and time, I could probably make a complete car (say a go kart) completely from scratch, building all parts from raw materials.

            However, to actually design them when nothing even close existed, to have the foresight, knowledge and imagination to produce them is another matter. I have designed evolutionary systems. I have several log books filler with notes on new engine designs, for instance, although only one ever made it anywhere near complete, and my final calculations on it showed the improvements would never be worth the additional complexity.

            But to produce a brand new idea, so radically different to what has come before it is revolutionary, is something I do not believe I have the imagination for. This is the key. A truly innovative engineer needs not only the technical knowledge, determination and skill, but also as much (if not more) imagination than any artist. It is, in fact, and art as much as it is a technical discipline, and finding people with both those areas of the brain working the the high level required, with the right knowledge, is incredibly rare.

  2. That caption! Oh my trivialization of mankind.

    1. This Caption Competition was one of the best ever!

  3. The noses will still look wierd. And I believe they impose a safety risk.

    The problem is not regulating the nose tip. If they want a better looking car, then the chassis has to be lowered.
    Since the mid 2000s, the front of the chassis have gotten higher and higher to improve aerodynamics. So they cannot just regulate what goes beyond the chassis, they should also lower the monocoque.
    Check out the Brawn GP from 2009, it had a much lower monocoque, with a low nose cone.
    So when the guys says we will see cars similar o the ones from the 90s, he forgets that the chassis were also a lot lower.

    With the very low nose and high monocoque, the nose cone becomes a ramp, ready to launch something or get under something.
    With the current and 2015 noses, the cars that hit a tire barrier will probably get buried underneath it.

    1. @brunes

      So when the guys says we will see cars similar o the ones from the 90s, he forgets that the chassis were also a lot lower.

      …..Or that the cars were wider.

      1. I was reffering to the nose.
        But the width of the cars deffinetely made them look lower.

        Check a McLaren from 2005 for example. That nose cone was quite low and had a nice round look.

  4. Sorry Keith but in French it’s Tribunal de Grande instance.

    1. Changed it, thanks.

  5. Another interesting point in that Forbes story is that Chilton’s Marussia seat cost him £7 million per year ($10.7m).

    1. What?! So Max was a pay driver? I cant believe it.
      /sarcasm

      Seriously though, compared to what other drivers are believed to pay, he got off lightly. Most of the drivers bring money to a team in either a direct or an indirect way. Look at Maldonado, Guttierez, Petrov, Senna, Perez, Sutil even Grosjean, they brought in a lot of dough.

      Now I know $21m is a lot of cash for those last places (over two years), but for those kind of performances they should have squeezed him more.

      1. even alonso, for that matter. How many money Santander pay to Ferrari? would Santander go to Ferrari if Alonso haven’t signed?

  6. I’am sorry if this is going to be a bit spamy, but it’s for a good cause, IMO.

    The letters and ridicule we fans directed towards F1’s institutions seems to have worked in getting rid of the double-points (maybe).

    But in the meantime, the worst idea in all of motorsports has been introduced, know as Fanboost. So I want to share my ridicule of it in an effort to shame FIA and everybody in F-E:
    http://imgur.com/gallery/ICUUMTO

  7. Fanboost is much less effective than DRS actually

    1. I’m pretty sure that @mateuss ‘s issue with Fanboost is not that it’s ineffective, but that it diminishes driver skill and replaces it with driver popularity as a tool for success on the track. It’s demeaning to the noble ideal of a sport.
      Where next? Why not vote for a popular driver to be allowed to take a shortcut? or for an unpopular driver to be voted off the track halfway through a race? It might be good viewing, but it isn’t motor racing as we know it.

      1. You have it right Johnny. I don’t mind people having their popularity dancing, singing contests or Takeshi’s Castle type extravaganza.

        But these things should not be conflated with sport. This voting idea is unsporting and should stay away from sports.

        What we have here in F-E is the worst of both worlds. As a sport, it is simply not one due the arbitrary popularity contest part. And as a popularity voting type thing it is pretty ineffective and boring for people who mostly consider the thing we love as “driving around in circles”.

        And I also think we have to extinguish the evil in it’s roots and not let it spread to other formulas!

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