Marussia’s eleventh-hour bid to return to action in Abu Dhabi has failed.
With Caterham already set up at Yas Marina, insiders on Wednesday then spotted F1 personnel wearing Marussia team shirts in the Abu Dhabi paddock. It is believed they were Ferrari employees set to work on Marussia’s customer engines.
But rumours then circulated in the media centre that Marussia, having missed the official freight deadline, was indeed making an eleventh-hour trip from the UK to contest the 2014 finale. But team driver Max Chilton has now written on Twitter: “Devastated for everyone involved at Marussia in the past 24 hours that the hard work trying to get to Abu Dhabi didn’t work out as we hoped.”
The PA Sport news agency said Marussia’s hopes had been buoyed by talks with a potential buyer, but quoted an insider as saying: “Sadly, it hasn’t happened. “By 5.30-6pm it was game over.”
