Manor targeting Renault as much as Sauber

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Manor racing director Dave Ryan says his team is focusing on Renault as much as it is trying to defend from Sauber in the constructors' championship.

Pascal Wehrlein's tenth place in the Austrian Grand Prix promoted Manor to tenth in the constructors' championship ahead of Sauber, which has yet to score this year. Renault has also been struggling, scoring just six points courtesy of Kevin Magnussen in Russia.

While finishing tenth could be lucrative to Manor, Ryan told F1i his team has the mindset of targeting Renault to ensure it is attacking in every race.

"We’re not looking too much at Sauber, we’re looking at Renault as well," Ryan said. "They’re struggling and our job is to beat anyone we can, that’s our goal.

"It happens to be that Sauber is the one that we’re consistently beating at the moment but Renault is not doing too good a job at the moment, they’ve obviously got issues that they’re dealing with. So we’re looking at them and anyone else that comes our way."

While many teams have switched development focus to 2017, Ryan says it will not see anyone letting up before the end of the season.

“Yeah Toro Rosso is struggling a bit, let’s not forget they’ve got an older engine. I’m sure they’re the first to say they’re not delivering the performances they should be delivering.

"But we’re all trying, all the teams are desperately doing the best we can and I’m sure if I was at Sauber or if I was at Renault I would be sitting there thinking ‘Crikey what have we got to do now? How are we going to do this? How are we going to do that?’. Every single team in every position is going to each race thinking and believing they’re going to do better than the last race.”

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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.