There was concern for cash-strapped Caterham today as the team was spotted trying to sell Kamui Kobayashi on eBay.

The driver is listed as a ‘Japanese import’ and ‘not Inoue, Katayama, Ide etc’. The sale includes ‘helmet, 2x race suits, 10x branded baseball cap, 1x cheeky smile’. He is said to be in ‘good condition’ but ‘without box, box, box’.

According to Caterham’s listing, Kobayashi ‘performs well’ although under bad points they do warn that he can be ‘occasionally erratic’. On the plus side, he is said to be ‘fully house trained’ and ‘generally gets on well with other drivers’.

In a reverse charges call from their Oxfordshire base, a Caterham spokesman insisted to Sniff Petrol that all was well at the team, despite their efforts to flog one of their drivers on the internet. ‘The eBay sale is perfectly routine,’ he insisted. ‘From time to time we like to have a clear out of items with some value and Kamui happens to be one of those. Now you’ll have to excuse me, my three o’clock client is here.’

Kobayashi is not the first F1 star to be sold over the internet. At the beginning of this year Lotus bought Pastor Maldonado off Gumtree thinking they were getting someone good.