Sky Sports Online speaks to Marussia's John Booth about their 2013 season

Lightning won't strike twice will it? That was the fear for Marussia ahead of the Brazilian GP. As far as F1's newbies are concerned, tenth place in the Constructors' Championship is all-important and Caterham had snatched it from their grasp just five laps from the end of last year's race.

Booth's assertion of a team cutting their cloth according to circumstances comes in spite of a record £57.6million loss in 2012 - one they say reflected "further significant investment in people, technology and infrastructure". Marussia claim the eye-watering figure was further skewed by loans from their parent company, debt which has since been turned into share capital. Accounting finesse aside, though, Booth maintains the team have never come close to folding. "No, we've never been in that position," he asserted. "That's never crossed our minds. It's not been easy, don't get me wrong - there's probably six teams in this paddock that don't find it easy - but we've never been close to that. Our chief shareholders have been very supportive, always." Budget concerns even dominate talk of Marussia's drivers. As promising as Bianchi is, there's no doubt his Ferrari links have played a part in the team's new powertrain deal. Max Chilton, meanwhile, has been - and probably will always be - dealing with the pejorative 'pay driver' tag. Yet Booth seems happy enough with the young Englishman, who became the first rookie to finish every race in 2013. Will he stay on? "We are very close with Max, very close," he said. "He wants to stay and we want him to stay so it's a matter of sorting the details out really. "We like the lad and he's done a great job, particularly in the second half of the year. I think he's very comfortable here and very happy here." According to Booth, what makes Marussia's tenth-place finish all the more satisfying is that, with an eye on next season's technical shake-up, they had to turn the development tap off early. "The problem with a team of our size is that building a 2014 car from scratch has taken all our resources," he said. "So from Barcelona onwards, we haven't really brought any updates to the car. We've brought small updates but nothing major. "We've put all our resource and efforts into our 2014 car - which is on schedule. In fact, it's ahead of schedule. So we had to make that choice. Some teams have that choice but they have a parallel development plan going; we don't have that luxury." The switch to a new formula featuring smaller V6 turbo engines and enhanced energy recovery systems does, of course, have a heavy cost associated with it - one which Christian Horner wondered whether the small teams could cope with when he was asked about the subject in Brazil. "Impossible," was the adjective bandied by the Red Bull team boss but while Booth stresses that Marussia have planned ahead, he also questions the FIA's decision to 'go green' while economies are still experiencing sluggish growth at best. "The technology is wonderful, it's the first thing that F1's done that's really green ever, I think," he said. "To go at the same speed and the same distance on two-thirds of the fuel is a massive achievement. "But it may be that the timing is not great for Formula 1: the world economy is not recovering properly yet, and we're always two or three years behind - either the depression hitting us or the turnaround taking us with it. So it's probably not great timing." Even so, next year's car is ahead of schedule and Ferrari are "proving to be a bloody great company to work with. They even supplied us information we needed before we'd signed the contract, because they knew our deadlines were getting too late for the engine stage. That