Max Chilton, Marussia, Jerez, 2014

First pictures: Marussia MR03 hits the track at Jerez

2014 F1 cars

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The Marussia MR03 has made its first appearance on the third day of F1 testing at Jerez. Max Chilton drove a single installation lap in the car shortly before 3pm.

Team principal John Booth said the MR03 is the product of a “young but experienced and extremely talented technical and engineering group”.

“To have designed a car that is true to the concept first conceived in early 2012, despite the integration of an entirely new powertrain and whilst pushing hard to attain our 2013 constructors’ championship objective, is a testament to the extent to which we have matured as a technical organisation,” he added.

The team’s latest F1 design is their first to feature a Ferrari V6 turbo engine.

“We have nothing but good things to say about our new relationship with Scuderia Ferrari,” said Booth. “They are extremely professional and have been entirely supportive from the beginning.”

“There is excellent co-operation between our two technical groups in all areas of the new relationship and this has made the considerable challenge of integrating a new powertrain a great deal easier.”

Jules Bianchi and Max Chilton will continue to drive for the team this year, making Marussia the only team besides Mercedes to retain its 2013 driver line-up.

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“In view of the significant regulation changes, continuity is key, so it is highly beneficial to our technical team, and the engineering group responsible for developing the car in the field, that we retain the same drivers,” said chief engineer Dave Greenwood.

“What this means is that we have not only been able to optimise our monocoque design around an existing line-up, but we can focus all of our attentions on developing the MR03 with immediate effect.”

Marussia MR03: First pictures

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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55 comments on “First pictures: Marussia MR03 hits the track at Jerez”

  1. Not bad. Car seems stretched tho!

    1. I noticed that too, I think it’s just the combination of the sparse (black) livery on the side pod and the lack of logos there.

    2. The design, nose apart, is like those cars from the early 90s.

    3. Its the livery and angle, it should be on pair with the other cars. Comparing with the caterham the marussia shows for the second year running an improvement in designing and composites, still they have a step to make, so the only chance to see the marussia on the points is if the renaults cant go too far.

  2. Nice car as always from Marussia. Shame they went for the long nose, better than Caterhams by a mile!

  3. That was quick, Keith, thanks!
    Surely not the ugliest car :)

  4. It seems remarkably bereft of any aerodynamic quirks and add-ons. Nothing on the side pods by the looks of it and very little work at the back.

    I can’t imagine that is to the car’s advantage.

    1. I thought all those devices were banned a few years ago, but the rich teams have seemed to find a loophole to bring them back in.

    2. @godofwine The sidepods are minuscule, its a very sane design but precise and suave somewhat featurless their soon not to be rivals caterham built a car as blocky as a 90’s videogame whereas this looks like a proper new gen car.

    3. I can’t imagine that is to the car’s advantage.

      It pretty much gives them a blank canvas to work with. If they get the basics right, it gives them a solid starting point. They can add and subtract parts as need be without having to worry to much about the existing chassis.

  5. It’s simple, elegant and quite good-looking. I don’t know if it’ll be fast and probably won’t be, but I quite like it…

  6. Car #4? I seem to have forgotten Marussia were the constructors runners-up last year! :P

    1. It took me while to spot it, so I don’t think it’ll be too confusing for the rest of the season.

      Nice car, though.

    2. They have a record-breaker driver, seems legit.

    3. You didn’t have to be runner-up to get 3 and 4 on your cars. You also got them by winning the constructor championship but not having one of your driver be champion.

  7. Why is it always the slow cars that look the best?

    1. Have you seen the Caterham?

      1. Is the Caterham slow? We don’t know.

        1. We don’t know if MR03 is slow either. When men lack information about the future, they resort to recent past to formulate predictions…

  8. It’s always worrying when a team’s lack of budget is clearly viable to even the most casual onlooker in the simplicity of the design. Still, Marussia proved themselves a more strategically and financially pragmatic team than Caterham last year and have probably extracted as much from their budget as could be expected, and with the brilliance of Bianchi, Marussia vs. Caterham might not be a fall gone conclusion in 2014.

  9. It looks incredibly simple. But it looks gorgeous ! love it.

    It’s going to be at the back of the grid but I hope manage to beat Caterham again and by a long way ! :)

    1. .. No F1 car is ever simple!

  10. What’s that on the engine cover? on the white bit, when it goes down. Looks like ducts…

    1. All the Ferrari engine cars have it, probably a gearbox oil cooler.

      1. @geemac ah, yeah, they confused me because they used to be a lot closer to the roll hoop

    2. seems those are ducts – I guess for gearbox cooling or something like that

  11. Now that’s how you paint a car properly. The lines of the livery matches the car perfectly, they even managed to cover the vile nose. Well done, Marussia.

    Now whoever painted it get to work on the other cars!

  12. Great work on the paint job, indeed. You really can’t see the ugly finger/nose/penis at all.

  13. That’s a loooooong wheel-base car.

  14. Oh… that’s… really boring. Very plain design, made even more so by a livery that looks like it came from a Hot Wheels car. Caterham might be ugly, but now it’s starting to look interesting in a Tom Waits kinda ugly. This is just bland – I guess they went conservative with a hope to develop along with the season.

    1. @maciek the red is the problem, its not vibrant enough. It reminds of baked beans

  15. That looks like the wheelbase is enormous. Do they know they can only carry 100kg of fuel?

    1. A case of once bitten twice shy?

  16. Vasily Khonichev
    30th January 2014, 14:32

    It’s lack of any aerodynamic details reminds me of 199x-early00’s cars. Looks so good because of it. Beautiful. Shame it’s gonna be the last on the grid, most likely.

  17. With a wheel base that long you’d think they’d be running a V16 under the engine cover.

  18. At first glance it is simple BUT there is a lot of interesting detail on it. The three way split in the airbox, the split in the sidepod entrances, nicely packaged sidepods.

    It looks like a really good honest F1 car, I reckon they’ll have Caterham beat this year.

    1. I can’t imagine that. Marussia’s car looks like they didn’t have the money to look into anything other than the simplest solutions. At least Caterham’s car, while the nose is onorthodox to say the least, looks like some thought went into it.

      1. It isn’t all about the nose as James Allison said yesterday.

        Caterham’s sidepods look like they belong on a barge, any benefit their nose design gives them over Marussia will be blocked by those massive sidepods. The Marussia is full of little details round the rear (like the McLaren-esque wing support) that make me thing they’ll have them beat. They’ve thought about this car, you can see it. They don’t have much cash, but they’ve spent it wisely it seems.

        1. I think Caterham will crush Marussia this year. Caterham has more money and a much better lead driver. Marussia looks like they are treading water. I like them, but they’re not beating Caterham. They need serious investment or to become the Ferrari B-squad.

        2. Caterham’s sidepods are like that year after year. You wonder who came up with that abomination

        3. Given the over-heating issues Renault cars seem to be having those big side-pods might be a blessing in disguise.

          1. But all the drag those create are still a curse.

  19. It is great to see no one is complaining about the nose on this car, even though it has that pointy part too like other cars, but maybe people have got over their fears the last few days and have come to accept it doesn’t look too bad.

    1. It’s because of the clever livery that some teams (Marussia) have been using. It makes the penis nose almost forgivable…almost.

  20. No sponsors on that car to!

  21. OmarR-Pepper (@)
    30th January 2014, 15:10

    Is there a MAXIMUM wheelbase lenght? It looks as long as a Pagani Zonda, or a bus.

  22. car looks nice at least, not quite as good as the merc or mc but around the level of the williams rb ferrari and force india. That has no bearing on how quick it is though, the front wing doesnt look particularly simple and they have a couple of detail pieces but you can tell that the rear of the car is far from optimised if you compare the sidepods and rear of say the mercedes (which look skin tight and shrink wrapped exposing a lot of the rear suspension) to it. Should be a decent runner though, if they canbe as reliable as last year maybe even their first ever points.

  23. Looks good,i hope marussia score their first points soon!

  24. Not bad-looking at all. Shows what you can do with a bit of thought to the livery – sufficiently different so we don’t confuse it with the Ferrari, handily.

  25. Nice clean shape, apart from the end of the nose…
    Needs a bigger 4 – this is how it’s done: Stefan Bellof’s Tyrrell

  26. Nice looking car, hopefully the simplicity isn’t as much of a problem as some people are opining. The livery on the other hand is excellent, I’ve never liked the look of the virgin/marussia cars until now…

  27. Alot of people are saying that Marussia will struggle because of the
    simplicity of the design.That is,arguably,wrong!I think,that it will
    be reliable (because of the simplicity) and will therefore score points
    and do well, even if it’s pace is a little slow.
    I’ll stop moaning now!It looks good though!
    Should thrash Caterham (hopefully), if you haven’t guessed, i’m a Marussia fan!
    Go go Marussia! :)

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