Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race Results

Stevens signed by Manor WEC team

Will Stevens has been signed by Manor to race in its World Endurance Championship [WEC] team this season.

Having driven for Manor in F1 last season, Stevens lost his seat as the team opted for an all-new driver line-up of Pascal Wehrlein and Rio Haryanto. Former Manor F1 bosses John Booth and Graeme Lowdon recently left the team and entered in to WEC with an ORECA 05 LM P2 car, and has now expanded to a two-car team which sees the addition of Stevens.

“Everything has moved very quickly since we first announced that we would be entering the 2016 World Endurance Championship," Booth said. "It is great news to be running an additional ORECA 05 LM P2, we can’t wait to get started with the season at The Prologue at the end of March.

It’s great that Will is joining the team, we know his talent and speed from working with him over the last few years in Formula 1 and we are all really looking forward to going racing with him.”

Having missed out on an F1 drive this year, Stevens says he is looking forward to expanding his experience in endurance racing and believes Manor will be in a position to challenge for wins.

“The opportunity to continue my relationship with Graeme and John was one that I was very pleased to accept," Stevens said. "It gives me a great chance to explore endurance racing, be competitive and go racing with people I enjoyed working with last year so I’m looking forward to it.

“My objective is to have a number of top level career choices going forward, and to be able to gain experience in endurance racing will hopefully open up my career prospects. I want to keep very busy, enjoy my racing and do some winning and I’m confident that by working again with Manor in WEC I’ll achieve all of those things.”

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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.