Musical chairs - Rossi in for Chilton .

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 ?

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"

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.

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?

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

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

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

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 .

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 .

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

I wonder whether Haas has ditched his own team idea and bought Marussia instead?

Never mind. Max is in. Rossi is out. I do not think Haas has ditched his idea.