Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsManor

Manor eyes full strength by end of season

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Manor team principal John Booth wants to return personnel numbers to full strength by the end of the current season.

The former Marussia team exited administration ahead of the first race in Australia, having to re-hire a number of employees in order to be able to prepare the cars to head to Melbourne. Since then, Manor has been adding to its numbers on a regular basis but Booth believes it will take the whole year to return to the level he wants.

"We’re building, we’re building," Booth said. "We started in Australia with really a skeleton crew back in Silverstone at the office, the full operating crew at the circuit. But over the months we’ve been gradually building the staff base back at the office and we hope by the end of the season we will be back up to full strength."

And Booth says recent races have shown the team is moving in the right direction, with a new sponsor appearing on the updated MR03B at Silverstone.

"After a very difficult, well-publicised start to the season, we are at last entering a positive phase. Last couple of races we have brought on board a couple of multi-national companies that are new to Formula One.

"We are back in the windtunnel on a regular basis, started [before Silverstone], and we brought the updates to the race. But on first year looking very positive and we want to continue in that vein and keep pushing forward."

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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.