Team boss Trevor Carlin has confirmed that his Carlin team will not be on the grid for this weekends opening Formula Renault 3.5 series event in Monza due to a shortfall in budget. They had already missed both pre-season tests at Aragon and Jerez.
Whereas they will be absent in Italy, the team are hopeful to be back on the grid for the second round of the season, but it will all depend on the state of the teams’ finances.
“We’d like to be at the second race,” said Carlin. “As soon as we get an economic solution that’s workable we’ll be back out there, but until then, the cars will stay parked. [In terms of funding] we’re not even close.”
“We’ve got sensible budgets for the other things we’re doing and it seems silly to be pulling resource from that to subsidise World Series. Right now I’m not even near 50 per cent of a budget.
“At the moment Renault Sport have been very, very helpful to us, and hopefully we can repay that help by returning as soon as possible. We want to carry on though. We’re a top team, and if we can get back there with some front running drivers we can continue that.”
Carlin took Mikhail Aleshin and Robert Wickens to consecutive drivers championship in 2010 and 2011, with Wickens holding off his team-mate and current Toro Rosso F1 driver Jean-Eric Vergne to the title. But Trevor Carlin did not rule out the possibility of another team taking over the entry, and knows some of the other team bosses are disappointed to see one of the series’ most loyal teams struggling.
“If [Renault] find someone that wants to take over the entry then that’s their prerogative. At the minute we are pushing to carry on. That’s our intention.”
