Marussia have done a U-turn on their decision to replace Max Chilton with Alexander Rossi for this weekend’s race at Spa, the team confirm.
The news broke yesterday of the Banbury-based team opting to have Rossi, who joined the team as reserve driver last month, step in for the British driver with the need for the team to secure more financial backing.
Although it has now emerged that Rossi will only take part in the first practice session (as originally planned), with Chilton set to be back in the car for the remainder of the weekend, with contractual hardships seemingly sorting itself out.
“I can’t got into too much detail on the individual instances but we are running an F1 team here.” Team President and Sporting Director Graeme Lowdon told BBC.
” There are a large number of commercial agreements that are involved and sometimes we reach a stage where for contractual reasons it’s not appropriate for a driver to be in the car and we took that action
“These things happen. It’s th drivers’ jobs to be flexible. Both Max and Alex are professional drivers who will take this in their stride. This is just a reflection of how the industry has to work sometimes.”
The sport’s governing body FIA released a statement regarding Marussia’s proposal to have Chilton back in his seat: “The stewards have received a request from Marussia F1 Team to change the nominated driver Alexander Rossi (car #42) back to their previously nominated driver Max Chilton (car #4) for the 2014 Belgian Grand Prix.
“In accordance with Article 19 of the FIA Formula 1 sporting regulations the stewards great permission for this driver change.”
Rossi would’ve been the first American driver to race in Formula 1 since Scott Speed for Toro Rosso back in 2007.
