Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsManor

Manor needs mid-season break - Lowdon

Manor sporting director Graeme Lowdon says the team needs the mid-season break to recover from the emotion of the past nine months.

The former Marussia team endured Jules Bianchi’s crash and then went in to administration before returning to the sport as Manor ahead of the start of the season. While the team is still rebuilding, it had to deal with Bianchi’s death earlier this month, and Lowdon told F1i it was a big challenge for the team just to race in Hungary last weekend.

“It’s just been a tough weekend at the end of a tough nine months,” Lowdon said. “Everyone in the team likes racing and I know Jules wouldn’t thank us if we weren’t fully committed to trying to do the best race that we can, which is obviously what we did.”

And Lowdon says the past two weeks have been an incredibly tough time on top of a challenging return to F1 for the team.

“We go away and people forget it’s been non-stop on the commercial side since last year. Pulling the team together ahead of Melbourne, then straight in to racing - relentless racing - and now we’ve reached the industry shutdown whereby virtue of the rules we’re forced to take a break.

“It couldn't come at a more welcome time, I think. It’s been physically and mentally a very difficult time. It’s been emotionally very difficult for everybody and so it’s nice for the guys to be able to go home, spend a bit of time with their families and get batteries recharged ahead of Spa. We’ll come out refreshed and ready to go.”

Click here for F1i's driver ratings following the Hungarian Grand Prix

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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.