Marussia call for equal rights

The Marussia Formula One team have called on the sports bosses to treat them as equals to the other ten teams on the grid.

Marussia are the only team in the paddock who do not have a commercial rights deal in place with F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone and F1 stakeholders CVC Capital Partners.

This means that they are receiving no financial support from the commercial rights earned by Formula One and leaves the team struggling at the back of the grid.

‘It puts undue pressure on the team. All we ask for is a level playing field. All teams should be treated equally. For whatever reason, that does not seem to be the case, We just don’t have a deal with the commercial rights-holder. Why should that be? This sport is full of strange mysteries and that is one of them. Lowdon told the Times as quoted by Sky Sports.

‘Ultimately, Bernie is the chief executive, CVC are the majority owners. He presumably reports to their board and that board has to make a decision on how it treats companies it deals with. We are one of those companies, and it chooses to treat us differently.

‘It doesn’t make any sense to me, but then I don’t work for CVC. Maybe they have a masterplan.’

Usually a Concorde Agreement between the Formula One teams, the commercial rights holder and the FIA would be in place in would set out clearly the rules and regulations for the sport and finances.

But a new agreement has not been put in place as yet, which has left the teams to strike their own deals with Ecclestone and CVC.

Ecclestone has previously stated that he is only in favour of a ten team championship [click, for previous article] and the reason why there is no deal in place with Marussia was because they were beaten to tenth place in the FIA Formula One constructors championship by Caterham last season [click, for previous article].