Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsManor

Sponsors appeased after Manor start - Stevens

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Will Stevens says his backers are now happy with his Manor deal following a delayed start to the season.

Manor was unable to get either car prepared in time to take part in the Australian Grand Prix, while the team could only run one car at a time for much of the weekend in Malaysia before Stevens was ruled out of qualifying and the race with a fuel system issue. However, with both cars comfortably inside 107% in both China and Bahrain and completing both races, Stevens says his sponsors have been satisfied with the progress being made, though that doesn’t necessarily mean their names will end up on the car in Barcelona.

“The first four races everyone gets those out of the way and then there’s a couple of weeks to get everything sorted for the European races,” Stevens told F1i. “We’re working in that direction. Everyone wants to see everything is working properly and up to speed, and obviously the last two races have done that.

“Everything will start to come a lot easier and we’re in a good position where at the moment nobody’s in a rush to get on the car if you like, they’re happy enough with what we've got at the moment. So we’re not really under any pressure to fast forward any of that because the deal we’ve done we’re absolutely fine with where we’re at at the moment.

“The people we’ve got with us, the priority isn’t actually necessarily on exposure on the car, it’s more about the networking they can get within F1. I think more and more sponsors are looking towards that as much as anything else because F1 has obviously got a lot of good people in and networking wise it can help a lot. So as much as it’s important to get exposure on the car there’s a lot of other things you can bring to the table as well.”

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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.