Race suits, cars and steering wheels to go under the hammer
Tuesday 16 December 2014 09:38, UK
Marussia’s assets will start to be auctioned off by the team’s administrators this week, all but ending hopes the debt-laden outfit can be salvaged.
The team entered administration following the Russian Grand Prix and missed the final three races of the season while new backers were sought following the withdrawal of support by venture capitalist Andrey Cheglakov.
A live webcast sale will take place on Tuesday December 16 and Wednesday December 17, followed by a timed online sale on Thursday December 18, with the first lot under the hammer to be a 2010 Wirth steering wheel.
Car parts such as noses, front wings and engine covers will also be for sale, in addition to driver’s race suits. Indeed the liquidation is such that even “black leather belts with silver buckle” are listed as items available to bid on.
Show cars and race cars without engines will also be auctioned and on Wednesday the team’s manufacturing equipment and transporters will be sold.
The final day of the sale will see all furniture and computers put under the hammer.
A further sale will take place on January 21 2015 when the 2014 race cars (minus engines), spare parts and components, pit equipment and GP3 race cars will be auctioned.
Gene Haas, who will enter the sport in 2016, has revealed he will be amongst the bidders as his team puts its infrastructure in place.
“We have got the Marussia auction list so I think we will be bidders for some of that stuff,” Haas was quoted by The Guardian.
Bidding on a defunct team should perhaps serve as a warning to a new squad entering F1, but the American added he felt Marussia and Caterham were doomed from the outset.
“If we did it the way Caterham and Marussia did it we would have the same result so I think we are going to do it differently,” he said.
“A lot of the teams in the UK build everything themselves. They seem to have this English mentality that this is the way it has to be done and that is just not our business model at all.”
