Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsManor

Manor made 'colossal' progress in Melbourne

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Manor team principal John Booth says the team made "colossal" progress during the Australian Grand Prix weekend despite not running its cars.

Having exited administration late in February, Manor was unable to prepare its cars in time to take to the circuit in Melbourne and missed qualifying. The team had to explain its lack of running to the stewards but was not punished after satisfying the FIA that it had done everything possible to try and get out on track.

Asked if the situation would be different in Malaysia, Booth said he is in no doubt the team will be able to run during the second race weekend.

"Absolutely, we’re in a massively different place now than where we were at the start of the week," Booth said. "We actually have functioning racks now, we can talk to the cars. Even the information on the pitwall is working now.

"The progress over the week has been colossal, it was just not quite enough."

Directly asked if the team would have two cars which would be able to take part in FP1 at Sepang, Booth was adamant that is the case.

"I think we’ll get to Malaysia on the Monday, we’ll start set-up on the Tuesday and for sure we’ll be ready to run on Friday."

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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.