Marussia return to the F1 grid this season is rejected

Yesterday, the future of the Marussia F1 Team has been thrown into doubt once more after its plans to race in Formula 1during 2015 with their 2014 car was rejected by F1's Strategy Group in a meeting in Paris.

With the new season little over a month away, the team look likely now to miss out without enough time to build a 2015 specification machine.

It has been reported that certain teams (up to four) were reluctant to see the team, who were set to be run under the Manor Grand Prix name with new investors, return with last year's car, with Sahara Force India team being the most vocal. Should Marussia miss out, Dr Vijay Mallya's team will be in line to share the money Marussia would have been entitled too for finishing ninth in the Constructors' Championship.

In an interview with the media yesterday, Deputy Team Principal Bob Fernley has spoken out at the reasoning why they rejected Marussia's plans, citing that the supposed take-over of the team did not appear to have solid foundations. Fernley stated the following on the subject as follows:-

'The strategy group was faced with an application for Marussia's 2014 cars to compete in the 2015 championship. During the meeting, it emerged that there were compliance issues and that the application lacked substance.

'Equally, the speculative application submitted contained no supporting documentation to reinforce the case for offering special dispensation. For example, no details were supplied of who the new owners would be or the operational structures that would be put in place.

'Given the lack of information, uncertain guarantees, and the speculative nature of the application, the decision was taken that it is better to focus on ensuring the continued participation of the remaining independent teams.'

From what Fernley has stated in his interview, it is clear that he and the Force India team believed that the application didn't have enough to support its claims to return to the grid and had no choice but to reject the proposal. However, it has been suggested that Force India have only rejected this because they would lose the money that they would gain if Marussia were present on the grid this season and you can understand why many people would think this but we have to respect what Fernley has stated what the reasons for rejecting the bid are.

You can now say that the dismissal of Marussia's plans virtually ends the team's chances of racing in next month's Australian Grand Prix, but should they be able to build a 2015-specification car before the Bahrain Grand Prix in April, they should be allowed to race for the rest of the season without penalty.

As a result of this vote made by the F1 Strategy group this week, this now means that only 18 cars will be on the grid this season until Haas F1 joins the grid in 2016.

But at the moment, all you can say is that there is more to this than meets the eye and the full story hasn't come to light. Whatever has happened, it is clear that the bid by Marussia has been rejected by whatever reason it might be and we have to accept that decision even if we don't agree with it as fans of the sport who wouldn't love anything more than to see the team back on the grid racing once again.

On social media such as Twitter, many fans (including myself) yesterday expressed their disappointment regarding the news of Marussia and rightly so. It is not nice to see a team being rejected to race this season, even if it is with a year old car and wouldn't be in a better position for it either.

But let us not forget that even though Force India have been getting most of the blame for this situation, there are other teams involved who are also partial to blame too and it has been rumoured that Sauber and Lotus have also rejected the proposal even though this hasn't been confirmed by either team at this stage.

But it is clear that whatever has happened and has been decided on the situation this week, Marussia have a lot of work ahead in order to get back racing onto the grid this season and there's nothing more I would like to see the team back on the grid this season.

The prospect for Marussia returning to the grid is looking slightly slimmer than yesterday and it would be a fantastic achievement if they could be back to take their grid place; which is where they belong and rightly so.