LONDON -- Arrows has paid a creditor seeking to wind up the struggling team but its future in Formula One and involvement in this weekend's Italian Grand Prix remains uncertain.

Lawyers for Champion Recruitment Limited said that their clients had been paid, with costs, by Arrows Grand Prix International.

The High Court in the northern city of Leeds is due to hear a winding-up petition brought against Arrows by Champion Recruitment on Tuesday.

"The petitionary creditor has been paid but a lot of others are stacked up behind, wanting to step into their shoes. The court will decide whether to allow that," John Alderton, a partner at law firm Hammond Suddards, told Reuters.

Dutch driver Jos Verstappen, abruptly dismissed by the team before the start of the season after agreeing a new contract for 2002, is one of them according to his manager Huub Rothengatter.

Alderton said the likely outcome Tuesday was for the court to order an adjournment to a later date, possibly giving Arrows a month's breathing space, so that others could register their claims.

Arrows has missed the last two grands prix, and failed to compete in three of the last four, as it wrestles with mounting financial problems and tries to finalize a sale to an unnamed American investor.

The team's problems have reduced the starting grid to just 10 teams and 20 cars since the German Grand Prix in July in a season that has already seen one team collapse.

The French Prost team failed to make the season's start in Australia after being declared bankrupt in February.

The governing International Automobile Federation (FIA) asked Arrows for a written explanation after the team pulled out of the Belgian Grand Prix two weeks' ago without competing.

The FIA, which warned Arrows after it made no more than a token effort to qualify in France in July, said last week it had received a communication which it was studying before deciding what action to take next.

Under Formula One rules, laid out in the secretive Concorde Agreement between teams and the sport's rulers, teams lose their rights to compete if declared insolvent.

However Arrows has denied it is in that position and has argued force majeure, or unavoidable circumstances, to explain its inability to race.

The team said in a statement at Spa that it had been advised to do nothing that might jeopardize the successful completion of a sale.

An Arrows spokeswoman was unable to comment on the negotiations to sell the team or whether or not the team planned to compete at Monza next weekend.

Arrows has a presence at Monza already, having sent a truck and bus, which serves as a motorhome, straight to the Italian circuit from Spa after pulling out on the Friday before the Belgian Grand Prix.

However the cars were still at the English factory Monday. The team also has only one known driver at present after Germany's Heinz-Harald Frentzen left in August.