Musical chairs - Rossi in for Chilton .

[Bagwan]

Whilst Marussia is saying it's due to contractual issues , Chilton is out saying that he's stepped aside so that they could sell his seat to generate funds to keep going .

That's two very different versions of the situation .

Hard to think of a contractual issue , but for a performance clause , which wouldn't likely be in place at a back marker team , I would think , that would result in problems at mid-season .
It's seems more likely that Max's version is correct .

So , we have an American in F1 .
Do we need ask who paid the ticket ?

[truefan72]

lol

FP1 hasn't started and we already have some driver changes and interesting situations with certain teams.
I don't rate Rossi that highly. I never saw anything in 2 seasons of gP2 that lead me to believe he had "something special"

[steveaki13]

Max wasn't exactly setting the world alight.

Its always fun when drivers get chucked into F1. Good luck to him as well. Rossi will hope to be around in USA I assume.

[Storm]

I thought Valentino Rossi finally made it to F1....now that would be a big deal even for a team like Marussia
who is this Rossi?

[henners88]

Max isn't the fastest but his Dad is worth nearly a £100m, so its a no brainer for a struggling team.

[henners88]

Chilton to race in Spa after all, as reported on the BBC and across twitter. Bizarre U Turn indeed.

[Storm]

I just saw Alex Rossi 10 secs down on the lead car in FP1. Chilton was sitting on the pit wall.

[Bagwan]

It appears that Chilton was sidelined because his sponsorship funds hadn't come through yet , and they wanted to show that they were serious about it being an issue .

That looks like the way it went , but it doesn't really jive with the "voluntarily stepping aside" line that Max put out .

They're in trouble , to be sure .

[Bagwan]

So , Max is now being rather cryptic about the whole thing , saying there's more to the story , but he can't tell us about it .

Sounds to me like the team might have been sold .
Just a hunch , though .

[steveaki13]

Marussia too were being very mysterious about it and sweeping it all under the carpet