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Haryanto spending summer seeking sponsors

Rio Haryanto is spending his summer break hard at work seeking sponsorship that will allow him to return to the Manor Racing car for the rest of the season.

"It’s going to be quite a busy summer break for me,” Haryanto admitted. "We need to find some support from some sponsors and my management are working very hard."

Indonesian state-owned oil and natural gas corporation only provided sufficient funding to put Haryanto in the car for the first half of the season until the Hungarian Grand Prix, and the team opted to retain him in Germany to allow them to make a more long-term decision over the summer break.

Former Manor driver Alexander Rossi has said he had recently been approached to take over from Haryanto for the rest of the season but that he had been forced to decline because of his current commitments in IndyCar, where he won the Indianapolis 500 in May.

McLaren driver Stoffel Vandoorne has also been linked with the race seat, as a way of getting the Belgian some race experience before his widely-rumoured switch to a full-time race seat with McLaren next season.

But Haryanto has by no means given up hope of finding the money that will allow him to extend his time at Manor.

"We are going to have a few meetings over the next couple of weeks and hopefully there is some good news coming up," he told ESPN. "My aim was always to be able to finish the whole season."

Haryanto praised the enthusiastic support he had received from Indonesian fans, but admitted being frustrated by the lack of financial support that had been forthcoming.

"When it comes to financial support, I don’t think they could have done anything else," he said. "I’m a bit disappointed because it is not easy to still have doubt over what will happen in the future.

"Sometimes you are not always going to have good days and sometimes you have bad days, so it is what it is," he added. "I believe in my management and they are working very hard to secure the seat for me for the whole season."

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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.