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18 if Marussia still leaves the 2nd car empty out of respect for Bianchi.

There is absolutely no reason for them to do this, and frankly I would be disappointing if they did.

it's pretty logical, given the 'nearly there in spa' and the location of the next track, that they will give the seat to Rossi

Add a "For Jules" banner to the car and get it out there. We should be racing to support him...

What if Caterham does show up and gets an 8th place? All Bianchi's hard work for nothing. Chilton alone can not possibly push the team enough to defend their position.

The Russian owner is rumored to be fed up with it and only willing to fund the team up to the Russian GP. With the unlikeliness of Sauber AND Caterham scoring more points in the upcoming races, 10th is basically secured and 9th is still very likely.

If they can trick the FIA an Bernie into believing its Force Majeure they only run 1 car it saves them a few quid.
I really doubt the real and only reason they didn't run a 2nd car in Russia was because of Bianchi and the biggest untold reason was $$$$$.

If Marussia is even there:
http://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/marus ... p-reports/

that can't be a big surprise, realy. Just look at (lack) of sponsors.

does this mean 3 car teams for next year?

If it ever happens I don't think it will be sooner than 2016.

I believe that the current regs state that they need as little as 60 days notice.

Before the season opener?

So we might have none of the three teams that entered in 2010 on the grid next year (not taking USF1 in consideration).

We might have Forza Rossa in 2015 though (not sure what kind of construction Kolles has up his sleeve), and Haas in 2016.

you really start to wonder if this is a set up plan. To the public eye they aren't taking any steps to prevent teams from going under and they aren't taking any real steps to keep 20 car grids.

F1 is becoming like MotoGP used to be about 2-3 years ago when they had 16 bikes

If they wanted to have more teams, stop changing the regs every year and have some stability.

you are saying the solution is to allow GP2 cars in the field?

We've been over this a million times. The lot of us can come up with several ideas that would help F1 but either the teams, Bernie and FIA aren't willing to fix it or just too stubborn

Multi class racing

Meh, teams come and go in F1 all the time, and has always done so. The new teams have so far done nothing to impress me, so I'd guess it would be even harder to impress sponsors. No big loss for me anyways.

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I shagged a couple of loose balls for her in warmups.

But in the past there always where enough other teams and there came new one's to replace them. Now we barely see any new one's come.
Of all the new teams entering F1 in the last ~20 years only Stewart (now Red Bull) and Jordan (now Force India) and Sauber have survived and of those 3 Sauber is in dire need of money and the owners of Force India are having some financial troubles in their home country and it's not yet clear how it will affect the team. And Red Bull is here until they're fed up with F1.

It's not that we'll necessarily will miss Caterham, Marussia or HRT but F1 has been on a slippery slope where only a few teams seem to have a stable financial base for the time being. But for how long?
Will Mercedes and Red Bull still be interested in F1 if there are only a few teams left with all 3 or 4 cars? Even if Red Bull pulls out now it means 4 cars are in danger. In the next few years it could be 6 or 8 cars.

Frankly, the only 2 teams I don't see quiting F1 or going out of business any time soon are Ferrari and McLaren. Williams will hold out as long as they can but unless there will be drastic cost-cutting changes or a financial strong partner they will fall behind when others start running 3 cars.