A lack of sponsors and the power of pay-drivers could lock Nico Hulkenberg out of formula one.<\/p>\n
On the one hand, the German is the hot property at the tail-end of the 2014 ‘silly season’, linked with moves to Lotus, McLaren and Force India.<\/p>\n
McLaren, however, is tipped to stick with the Mexican-backed Sergio Perez, while Pastor Maldonado’s PDVSA millions are speaking loudly at Lotus, whose 35 per cent team sale to a group of investors may have failed.<\/p>\n
Staying at Sauber could be problematic for Hulkenberg because of the importance of Sergey Sirotkin, Esteban Gutierrez or even Vitaly Petrov’s powerful backers, and even a return to Force India may now be off the table.<\/p>\n
McLaren is desperately seeking a F1 seat for its youngster, the new Formula Renault 3.5 champion Jan Magnussen, and Marussia seems to fit the bill.<\/p>\n
“Kevin has impressed us in the tests he has done,” sporting director Graeme Lowdon is quoted by France’s L’Equipe.<\/p>\n
“We are a team that brings young drivers into F1 so it (signing him) would fit with us,” he added.<\/p>\n
However, with the Ferrari-linked Jules Bianchi already signed for 2014, Lowdon said he would also like to keep Max Chilton on board, because continuity and experience will be important for the all-new rules next year.<\/p>\n
Briton Chilton also has millions in backing courtesy of the insurance giant Aon, where his father Grahame is the vice chairman.<\/p>\n
Germany’s Auto Motor und Sport said Chilton’s departure at Marussia could see his reportedly EUR 12 million in Aon backing race straight to Force India.<\/p>\n
Force India is believed to be extending its deal with Adrian Sutil, who has some backing by the German computer company Medion.<\/p>\n
That leaves the substantially unsponsored Paul di Resta, who has had an often fraught 2013 season, in the dark.<\/p>\n
“It’s mighty tough out there at the moment,” the Scot told the Telegraph this week.\u00a0 “Who wouldn’t be worried?”<\/p>\n
In short, even Hulkenberg and his manager Werner Heinz are having “sleepless nights” about the situation, the Swiss newspaper Blick claims.<\/p>\n
\u00a9 RIF | GMM<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A lack of sponsors and the power of pay-drivers could lock Nico Hulkenberg out of formula one. On the one hand, the German is the hot property at the tail-end of the 2014 ‘silly season’, linked with moves to Lotus, McLaren and Force India. McLaren, however, is tipped to stick with the Mexican-backed Sergio Perez, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[3],"tags":[5262,576,5340,4150,5284,448,1549],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19727"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19727"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19727\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19728,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19727\/revisions\/19728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}