Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsManor

Stevens sure results will turn around

Will Stevens is confident his results will improve having been beaten by team-mate Roberto Merhi in the last three races.

After Stevens started the season in impressive form, Merhi has got to grips with the Pirelli tyres and been much closer as the European season has progressed. The last four races that both Manor cars have finished has seen Merhi cross the line first, but Stevens believes he will see better results if he can avoid incidents early in races.

“Overall it’s positive,” Stevens told F1i. “The things that have happened in the last few races are just racing, those things are going to happen, it’s just happened in two or three consecutive races for us. But you can see the pace is there, every session we’re quicker and even in the race my lap was faster. Every single time it’s on outright pace we’re always quicker, which is encouraging.”

And having only been outqualified on three occasions this season, Stevens says his Saturday performances give him further confidence his race results will improve.

“The racing side of things, sometimes it goes your way and sometimes it doesn’t. At the moment I’m learning, the last two races have been mixed conditions, and you’ve got to make good calls. In those scenarios he’s come out better but the hardest thing is to have good pace and at the moment for sure we’ve got that.

“I’d prefer to have it that way round and then when things fall right in the races like they did at the start of the year then I’m sure the results will turn round. But overall I think it was a really positive weekend [at Spa].”

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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.