Marussia fails crash tests and won’t go to Barcelona
The Marussia team announced that they did not pass all the FIA crash tests successfully with the MR01. Therefore, they decided not to participate in the Barcelona tests to focus on their new car.
Marussia hoped to unveil its 2012 car, the MR01, this week. However, the Russian team did not successfully pass the 18 FIA crash tests required for the car’s homologation.
The team was not present in Jerez and, last week in Barcelona, Charles Pic was only able to drive for two days, out of the three initially planned, due to a problem discovered on the 2011 car he was driving.
Less than three weeks before the start of the 2012 season, the Marussia team is the only one that has not yet managed to pass the mandatory crash tests, and this is not good news for them: All single-seaters must pass the 18 FIA crash tests for homologation to be granted. Even though the MR01 has passed 17 of the crash tests, the regulations require the single-seater to have passed all crash tests before testing begins, Marussia states in a press release.
Following this new setback, the team decided not to go to Barcelona this week for the last four days of pre-season testing. Instead, they will work on their car to ensure it can pass, and this time succeed in, the crash tests in the coming days: « The team will not participate in the final pre-season testing session in Barcelona this week and will instead focus its efforts on retaking the crash tests at the end of the week » the statement continues.
This situation is likely to make the team’s start to the season very difficult. Charles Pic, a rookie driver in the discipline, is also likely to experience a challenging start to the year as he needs to accumulate miles to gain experience. For the moment, it must be acknowledged that this is not really the case, even though he was able to cover a little more than 1000 kilometers in the MVR-02 last week on the Catalunya circuit.
