Feb.6 (GMM) Bernie Ecclestone has confirmed reports that Marussia will not be allowed to return to formula one this year with its 2014-spec car.
Former Sainsbury’s boss Justin King is reportedly behind the efforts to bring the team – now called Manor – out of administration and back to F1 in 2015.
But as suggested in recent days, the effort looked sure to stumble at Thursday’s Paris meeting of the strategy group, where rival teams might not agree to allow Manor to keep its engines running with an outdated car.
To F1 business journalist Christian Sylt, F1 supremo Ecclestone now confirms: “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,” he was quoted by the Independent.
We have reported that Red Bull and Toro Rosso were among those who rejected Manor’s application, while the BBC says another dissenter was Force India.
The Finnish newspaper Turun Sanomat, meanwhile, claims that only Mercedes and Ferrari actually voted to allow Manor back in.
“The money that they (Manor) should have got gets distributed amongst the teams that are racing,” Ecclestone explained. “That’s a pretty good reason I suppose.
“Maybe the other teams would (also) have liked to use last year’s car,” he added. “The trouble was that you can’t do these things for one team, you have got to do it for everybody.”
Turun Sanomat said another matter discussed on Thursday was the potential move to a more powerful engine formula, but the report said the current turbo V6s will remain in place at least for 2016.