The Marussia F1 Team has completed its investigation into the cause of the Maria de Villota accident and has ruled out a technical fault with its car. The 32-year-old Spaniard continues to recover after losing her right eye as a result of her injuries.
The team’s official statement begins: “The accident occurred on 3 July during a straight-line test, at which Maria was making her testing debut for the Team and driving an F1 car for the fourth time in her career.”
Immediately following the accident, which took place a few days before the British Grand Prix, Marussia conducted an internal investigation to search for reasons that may have caused the MRo1 de Villota was driving to lunge forward into a stationary team truck. “Having carefully examined all the data and supplementary information available at that time, the Team were satisfied that there were no such car-related issues and cleared its chassis for race weekend participation,” Marussia’s statement added.
Following the race at Silverstone, Marussia commissioned an external investigation into the accident and shared their findings with the Health and Safety Executive (HSE).
Team Principal, John Booth, explains: “We are satisfied that the findings of our internal investigation exclude the car as a factor in the accident. We have shared and discussed our findings with the HSE for their consideration as part of their ongoing investigation.
“This has been a necessarily thorough process in order to understand the cause of the accident. We have now concluded our investigatory work and can again focus on the priority, which continues to be Maria’s wellbeing.
“In that regard, we continue to support Maria and the de Villota family in any way we can.â€
[Source: Marussia F1 Team]