Shizuka wrote:Just one sentence:
BATHPLUG YOU, BERNIE.
Remember 2003? You gave money to Minardi. YOU HELPED THEM.
The problem is, Marussia seem to have been burning through their money extremely quickly - their accounts indicate that they have probably racked up debts of more than $65 million for this year alone, and only survived until now because their former owner had written off around $200 million in debts before the 2014 season. Even if they had survived into 2015 and received extra money from FOM, that extra funding - thought to be in the order of $30 million - would probably have been entirely swallowed up by debt repayments.
From Bernie's cynical point of view, I guess that his question would be what Marussia's long term plans for the future were. The team was shorn of its primary backer and main source of revenue (Marussia Motors) and Bianchi's accident seems to have lead to Ferrari withdrawing their support for the team, so his calculus was probably that, even if he did offer a deal along the lines of what he offered Minardi or Williams in the past, would the team have survived much longer anyway?
The team had been devastated by Bianchi's accident, were without any means of financial support and depending on a team that was increasingly reluctant to offer them any more engines due to lack of repayment - brutal though it was, and in a situation of his own making, Bernie probably thought that the team would have collapsed irrespective of what he did, so why offer them a deal as he did with Minardi or Williams when it was only staving off a collapse that probably would have happened in 2015 anyway? Not that the whole situation doesn't already leave a bitter after taste...