It looked like it would be the best week end of Alexander Rossi's career, He was going to take the green flag, at Spa of all places, the same place where Michael Schumacher made his debut, the first American to do so in seven seasons... but it's not going to happen.
Max Chilton wrote the check after all and that's that.
From Andrew Benson's BBC column
" Marussia said on Thursday that Chilton, 23, would be replaced for the weekend by reserve driver Alexander Rossi as a result of "contractual issues". The team refused to give details but on Friday morning Marussia said Briton Chilton would be racing in Spa.
Marussia chief executive officer Graeme Lowdon suggested the issue had been related to financial payments. Lowdon said: "I can't go into too much detail on the individual instances but we are running an F1 team here.
"There are a large number of commercial agreements that are involved and sometimes it just happens we reach a stage where for contractual reasons it's not appropriate for a driver to be in the car and we took that action.
"These things happen. It's the drivers' jobs to be flexible. Both Max and Alex are professional drivers who will take this in their stride."
Or maybe Marussia just got a bit of free attention after watching Caterham get in the news with Lotterer taking Kobayashi's team.
Both Marussia and Caterham were about six seconds off the pace after the first practice session
Pos Driver Team Time Gap Laps 1. Nico Rosberg Mercedes 1m51.577s 25 2. Lewis Hamilton Mercedes 1m51.674s +0.097s 24 3. Fernando Alonso Ferrari 1m51.805s +0.228s 16 4. Jenson Button McLaren-Mercedes 1m52.404s +0.827s 21 5. Kimi Raikkonen Ferrari 1m52.818s +1.241s 17 6. Sergio Perez Force India-Mercedes 1m52.903s +1.326s 24 7. Kevin Magnussen McLaren-Mercedes 1m52.922s +1.345s 23 8. Nico Hulkenberg Force India-Mercedes 1m52.937s +1.360s 22 9. Daniel Ricciardo Red Bull-Renault 1m52.972s +1.395s 19 10. Valtteri Bottas Williams-Mercedes 1m53.172s +1.595s 20 11. Sebastian Vettel Red Bull-Renault 1m53.369s +1.792s 11 12. Daniil Kvyat Toro Rosso-Renault 1m53.594s +2.017s 21 13. Romain Grosjean Lotus-Renault 1m53.597s +2.020s 20 14. Adrian Sutil Sauber-Ferrari 1m53.703s +2.126s 14 15. Felipe Massa Williams-Mercedes 1m53.968s +2.391s 20 16. Jean-Eric Vergne Toro Rosso-Renault 1m54.189s +2.612s 20 17. Giedo van der Garde Sauber-Ferrari 1m54.335s +2.758s 16 18. Pastor Maldonado Lotus-Renault 1m55.336s +3.759s 21 19. Jules Bianchi Marussia-Ferrari 1m55.782s +4.205s 19 20. Alexander Rossi Marussia-Ferrari 1m57.232s +5.655s 20 21. Andre Lotterer Caterham-Renault 1m57.886s +6.309s 24 22. Marcus Ericsson Caterham-Renault 1m57.977s +6.400s 24
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