The Marussia-Carlin tie-up

Chilton/Aon on a Marussia F1 car soon? Photo: Carlin

It was announced yesterday, the Marussia F1 Team have joined forces with Carlin's GP2 team. I have a couple of things to note from this:

Firstly, this isn't the first rather confusing tie-up between an F1 team and a junior team. While Carlin and Marussia will race together in GP2, they are rivals in GP3 - where Marussia are present with the Manor team (the F1 team having been born out of John Booth's successful Manor operation).

It had been known that Manor/Virgin/Marussia/Whatever had wanted to be in GP2 to create a ladder up from Formula Renault through GP3 and onto F1. It would have been nice to see them have their own seperate GP2 squad rather than Lazarus come in, but the Carlin partnership is the next best thing.

We recently had Caterham and Arden join together in Formula Renault 3.5, even though they will continue to race against each other in GP2. Arden's GP2 team has gradually been declining though since Christian Horner stopped his day-to-day operation of the team, so I reckon me might see the two join forces in GP2 before too long - certainly come 2014 when the teams will all need to reapply for the start of a new three-year cycle. Particularly given that the company's name has actually changed from Arden Motorsport Limited to Arden Caterham Motorsport Limited.

And now the second thing to note. Marussia protege Rio Haryanto will be joining Max Chilton at Carlin, who are owned by Max's wealthy father Graeme - chief executive at insurance giants Aon and a keen petrol-head. Chilton will be entering his third season of GP2, and it's clear that he'll be looking towards making the jump to F1 very soon.

Could the Marussia-Carlin tie-up help him to get in at Marussia? They have something of a habit of signing a well-backed driver for their second seat and then dropping them at the end of the year for someone with a bit more cash. I have a feeling that, depending how he does in GP2 this year, we could see Chilton in the Marussia in 2014.

His Dad is already a minor sponsor at McLaren (with exposure only on the arms of the drivers' overalls) - and it's this that could well have got Chilton a couple of opportunities with Force India (who have strong McLaren links) at the end of last year. Don't forget now that Marussia too have a tecnical relationship with McLaren.

Interesting to note that there rumours in the media following Manor's original entry into F1 that they were in talks with Chilton Sr (who they actually referred to as Duncan Chilton) about a partial buy-out that could have seen Max racing for the team, before having even raced in GP2.

Damn 140 characters!

Chevrolet have confirmed that, as expected, they won't contest the BTCC in 2012. I didn't expect to have to blog about this, what with is being totally as I had expected, and in my opinion, no big deal. As usual, I summed up my feelings about it with a tweet:

Although I knew what I meant in my head at the time, it would appear that my tweet could be, and clearly has been, misunderstood.

I did not mean in any way to label anyone who worked for RML or Chevrolet on their two-year participation in the BTCC as lazy. Nor did I mean that the running of two ex-WTCC Chevrolet Cruzes didn't take any effort.

I used effort in a way that it often is in motorsport, for example when we say 'Ford's WRC effort', 'Toyota's new sportscar effort' or 'Chevrolet's BTCC effort'. It doesn't refer to the amount of effort put in, but is simply a way of describing a manufacturer or team's involvement in a particular championship.

And 'lazy' was just a term I used (without thinking anything of it) to describe the level of investment by Chevrolet UK, which was lower for their BTCC programme than it would have been had they needed to build and develop a car and/or engine from scratch. Which is exactly what they would have needed to do to remain competitive under the change in regulations in the BTCC.

So here is what my tweet would have looked like, without a 140 character limit:

"Chevrolet have announced on their BTCC Facebook page that they and RML won't be contesting the championship in 2012. This comes as no big surprise and had been expected. Their two-year BTCC programme had been fairly low-level, as they simply ran cars that had been built for their successful WTCC programme under the same regulations, rather than developing a new car. However, these cars had not been as competitive in 2011 with the increasing uptake of NGTC regulations in the BTCC. As a result, the team would have had to build a new car and engine for 2012, which would have required more investment from Chevrolet alongside their successful WTCC programme. Therefore, Chevrolet and RML remaining in the BTCC was unrealistic and unlikely."

As I have explained in response to questions about my tweet, Chevrolet's involvement in the BTCC with RML for the past two years was a good thing and we are grateful for it. It is a shame that the situation with regulations mean they can no longer sustain a BTCC programme.

I felt it necessary to put this down in blog form in order to stop me from looking like some ungrateful fool who didn't respect the 'effort' put in by those at Chevrolet and RML into the BTCC programme over the past two years. Because that would be untrue. Thank you to both Chevrolet and RML, and best wishes for the future!