Former Arrows workers will get no payment from the bankrupt company's recent auction, it has been confirmed.

Receiver for Arrows, Bryan Hamblin of PKF, said that former employees would receive no more than the statutory government minimum pay-off of £800 plus one week's pay or £250, whichever was the greater, for each year they worked for Arrows up to a 12-year maximum.

The auction, held two weeks ago, raised almost £500,000.

Mr Hamblin said: "The employees are unsecured creditors. Unfortunately there is £2m owed to secured creditors who come first in the queue and then £18m owed to bankers Morgan Grenfell, who come ahead of employees. In all we have only raised about £1m by selling off the company's assets."

He added that there was still a wind tunnel which once belonged to Arrows waiting to be sold but said that proceeds of that were earmarked for yet another bank.

Some former employees are angry that proceeds from the sale of the 30 acre Leafield site, which Arrows shared with sister company TWR Engineering, was not used to pay off debts.

Both Arrows and TWR were run by former racing supremo Tom Walkinshaw but the site was sold to American company Menard by a third Walkinshaw company.

Mr Hamblin said: "I cannot comment on that sale. Arrows was simply a tenant at Leafield."

TWR Engineering went into receivership but, unlike Arrows, was sold off as a going concern.

Meanwhile, management at a racing company are throwing a lifeline to at least one former employee of the failed Formula One team -- by creating a job at their Bicester headquarters.

The Arrowstar team, which races Caterham cars and is currently second in the Powertrain Caterham R400 Challenge, employs 12 people and sometimes finds itself working day and night to prepare the cars.

Top management at Arrowstar have been following the tale of Arrows failure to the tune of £20m and contacted the Oxford Mail with their offer of help.

The offer of at least one job will come at a timely moment for the 250 former Arrows employees who will receive nothing but the statutory minimum after losing their jobs at Arrows' Leafield site.

A spokesman for Arrowstar said: "We need at least one very skilled permanent worker here and possibly another one too. We all find the Arrows story very sad and wonder if we couldn't help someone to our mutual benefit."