MOTORSPORT: Failed F1 team back from the dead

The Marussia Formula One team that went into financial administration soon after the crash that left Jules Bianchi with severe head injuries late last season has been revived and is set to race in the Australian Grand Prix on March 15.

When the freight is loaded in Europe tomorrow for flights to Melbourne two cars from what is being called for now Manor Marussia will be among it.

It is the most miraculous rescue in F1 since Australian aviation entrepreneur Paul Stoddart saved Italy's Minardi in 2001 – and kept it going until he sold it in 2005 to Red Bull, which operates it as its second team, Scuderia Toro Rosso.

The Marussia cars flown to Melbourne will be 2014 models updated to meet this year's safety rules, being 5cm lower at the front bulkhead of the chassis and with a new nose.

They have had no testing and still have to pass Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) crash-testing in a British laboratory today.

Manor Marussia says it will introduce a new-model car during the season.

The team's only driver at the moment is 23-year-old Brit Will Stevens, who raced in last season's final race in Abu Dhabi for Caterham, another backmarker team now defunct.

Another driver will be named in coming days and both will bring sponsorship to the team.

Key managers have been kept – John Booth as team principal and Graeme Lowdon as sporting director.

Manor Marussia's saviour is a 37-year-old businessman born in Northern Ireland, Stephen Fitzpatrick, who founded and remains the chief executive of British energy company Ovo.

Fitzpatrick insists the rescue is with his own money, not Ovo's.

He says the team will have a budget this year of almost A$120 million.

By retaining the Marussia name, which came from a now-defunct Russian sports car maker that went bust 10 months ago after having bought into what began in 2010 as Manor and became Virgin Racing, the revived team will collect almost A$60 million in prize money from last year.

That money is the reward for having finished 10th in the F1 world championship, which Marussia did through Bianchi's ninth place in the Monaco GP – its only points in five seasons in the sport.

Bianchi was badly injured when he ran off the track in the wet Japanese GP last October, hitting a mobile crane recovering another crashed car. After weeks in hospital in Japan he was returned to France but remains in a serious condition in hospital.

Marussia went into administration within weeks of Bianchi's crash and rival team Force India, struggling financially too and thinking Marussia was finished, wanted the prize money due to it dispersed among what seemed to be nine remaining teams.

That would have meant an AUD $5 million injection for each of those nine teams.

While Force India did not get that windfall, F1 commercial supremo Bernie Ecclestone reportedly has arranged cash advances this year for it and two other battling teams, Lotus and Sauber.

Another businessman involved in the Marussia rescue is Justin King, formerly chief of British retailer Sainsbury's and previously touted as a potential replacement for 84-year-old Ecclestone.

King, whose son Jordan has raced in Formula 3 and this year moves into F1 feeder series GP2, has become Manor Marussia's interim chairman, but has not contributed money.   

He said fan support for the team had been huge and that he wanted to help it move forward, rather than aspire to Ecclestone's job.

Manor Marussia investor Fitzpatrick said he's had a "life-long passion" for F1 and could not let the team die after scoring its first points last year.

"Until November last year I was on wrong side of the F1 fence," Fitzpatrick said.

"My most recent F1 experience was I went to the GP in Singapore [last September] with a friend, we were walking down the track at the end of the race and looking at all the fans lined up on the pitwall – and looking at garages.

"I said, 'We need to figure out a way to get over there.'

"For a long time I had an ambition to own an F1 team ... but I didn't expect it to be in 2015.

"I picked up the phone to Geoff Rowley [the Marussia administrator] before the last race in Abu Dhabi and got an understanding of the situation and challenges the team were facing – the amount of money involved, level of debts involved.

"It seemed fascinating – almost hopeless. It looked like one of those situations that, with more time to understand everything, there was maybe a great opportunity.

"But it was too late. There wasn't any realistic possibility of reviving the team.

"Having made it through the hard five years, to get to the point of ninth in the championship, two years in the top 10, to reach the first rung of financial stability and due to receive [prize] fund money, to have run out of steam right at the last hurdle ... it seemed like too good [a] story to let end there.

"One of the things that really motivated me was how great a story it could be to figure out a way to help this team cling to survival.

"I very quickly established an easy working relationship with Graeme [Lowdon], had frank conversations about the challenges, team suppliers, the quality of team that was there – and one long list of challenges.

"We ascertained the top priorities – including [engine] Ferrari, then a host of 200 smaller creditors and suppliers that made up the backing of the team.

"We went through them one at a time, establishing relationships with creditors and suppliers, new commercial arrangements with them, and bringing the company out of administration, dealing with the FIA entry, with FOM (Formula One Management, headed by Ecclestone], engine and design contracts.

"In 10 days' time we will be in Melbourne with a very solid, clean business platform to operate on.

"The idea is not that this will be the black hole of Fitzpatrick family finances.

"We need to finish in the top 10 [in the world championship] and we think we can achieve that."

Fitzpatrick has shrewdly assessed that with only 10 teams in the championship Manor Marussia is assured of prize money – or payouts from F1's pool of TV and race fee revenues – that will go a long way towards keeping it running.

He's adopted the Stoddart template.

Manor Marussia sporting director Lowdon said the past few months had been "a roller-coaster".

"At certain times it was not completely clear we would get to this point," Lowdon said.

"We've come through it and now we just want to go racing again.

"We are now in a great place ahead of the new season. We are ready to go racing.

"Crash tests are ongoing – we block-booked some space at the laboratory to do the crash test this week.

"There are only a very small number of tests to be done – a push-off and an impact test.

"The timescale to prepare the car has been incredibly short, but ... the overall car is on schedule and main freight dispatch is Friday and we will be sending bits [to Melbourne] right up until the last minute."