Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsManor

Manor progress 'a bit of a miracle'

Manor team principal John Booth says the progress made over the first four races has been "a bit of a miracle".

The former Marussia team failed to run at all during the Australian Grand Prix weekend but qualified and completed the race in Malaysia with Roberto Merhi's car. The two rounds since then have seen both cars finish each race as the team has started to work more effectively and Booth believes it will be at "100%" by next weekend's Spanish Grand Prix.

Speaking exclusively to F1i, when asked to sum up the opening four races from Manor's point of view, Booth replied: "A bit of a miracle really.

"The focus initially was so hard on us getting to Melbourne that we never really got time to look past that. I think we were pretty much 95% there operationally by Malaysia and we’ll be 100% by Barcelona. The guys haven’t missed a beat, they’ve been really solid and I’m really, really pleased with the way it has come together.”

And Booth is also full of praise of the way the two drivers have performed in tough circumstances after such little running.

“Great job. Particularly in such a difficult time when we couldn’t even have two cars on track at the same time until qualifying in Malaysia - and then we didn’t anyway - so they were desperately short of running. One lap bursts is all they were getting and it’s not easy for them but they have dealt with everything we have given them to do.”

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.