Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMercedes

Mercedes impressed by 'real racers' Manor

Mercedes has described Manor as "a team of real racers" after concluding a deal to supply it with power units from 2016.

Manor had been running 2014-specification Ferrari power units this year having only exited administration at the start of the season, with the team embarking on a rebuilding project throughout 2015. Now in a new factory, Manor confirmed on Thursday it will run Mercedes power units from next year onwards and Mercedes High Performance Powertrains managing director Andy Cowell praised the team's attitude.

"It is a great pleasure to welcome the Manor Marussia F1 Team to our stable of customers at Mercedes AMG High Performance Powertrains," Cowell said. "They are a team of real racers with great spirit and impressive determination to succeed.

"We enjoy strong relationships with all our customer teams, and take pride in delivering a standard of hardware and service that reflects the high standards that Mercedes-Benz stands for.

"Furthermore, this new agreement should enable us to keep our supply roster at three customer teams for 2016, which is our ideal level in terms of technical and logistical capacity. We will be targeting gains in both performance and reliability for the 2016 Power Unit and look forward to delivering those to our new customers at Manor Marussia F1 Team."

Mercedes turned down the possibility of supplying Red Bull with power units next season, with the four-time constructors' champions threatening to quit the sport after describing its engine situation as "critical".

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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.