Trulli team out of Beijing opener of 2015/16 Formula E season
The Trulli Formula E team will miss the opening round of the championship in China after an issue with the delivery of its powertrain
Trulli stuck with its own technology despite a disastrous pre-season in which it failed to complete a timed lap.
It then opted to freight the powertrains to China itself, instead of with the remainder of the Formula E teams, to give it more time to fix its problems.
Trulli claims the delivery arrived in the country on Monday and that it has not been able to collect it despite initially getting clearance to do so.
It meant it did not present its quartet of Motomatica JT-01s for scrutineering by Friday's 3pm deadline, breaching Article 24.4 of the sporting regulations.
Trulli applied for a deadline extension, which the FIA granted, giving it until 8pm local time to present the powertrain to be sealed.
It failed to make that, and was then omitted from a revised official entry list.
The team missed the additional 30-minute Friday test session afforded to teams for this event only.
"We are very sorry to announce that we, unfortunately, won't be able to compete in tomorrow's race as our engines and inverters are still at the Beijing customs, which has made it impossible for us to complete our cars in time for today's scrutineering and therefore we will not be able to participate in tomorrow's race," team principal Lucio Cavuto said in a statement.
"We would like to thank the FIA marshals for kindly extending the scrutineering deadline last minute.
"And we would also like to thank FEH and NEXTEV Team China for their support and help with the Chinese customs the last couple of days.
"We are now going to ask DHL Motorsport to handle our engines and inverters in customs, to be sent together with the rest of the team's boxes so that they all get transported to Malaysia.
"Now we focus on Putrayaja and to ensure that this incident will never happen again."
Formula E CEO Alejandro Agag told Autosport earlier on Friday that problems at this event could rollover to the second round in Putrajaya in two weeks' time.
"Racing is about taking risks sometimes," he said. "These guys have decided to take a risk. Sometimes it pays and sometimes it doesn't.
"They need to get it right here and if they don't get it right here it will be very difficult for them for Malaysia and then they have to wait for Punta [del Este, round three, in December]."
UPDATED 13:30 BST.
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