Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsManor

New Manor finally runs in Malaysia

40

Manor finally ran for the first time in 2015 during first practice for the Malaysian Grand Prix.

The team was present in Australia but never made it out on track as it struggled to get its car ready in time. The FIA summoned the team to explain its lack of running but was satisfied Manor had done everything within its power to get out on track and team principal John Booth insisted the car would be ready for the start of the Malaysian Grand Prix weekend.

Friday morning saw Booth's claims validated, with Will Stevens putting the first laps on the modified 2014 car. Both Stevens and team-mate Roberto Merhi managed to complete eight laps each during FP1, although the cars were over six seconds off the pace set by Nico Rosberg.

With Manor only exiting administration late in February, the team had yet to run its car at all prior to Sepang, meaning it is essentially working through a test schedule in Malaysia.

On Thursday Stevens insisted Manor is setting itself no targets as it attempts to get up to speed.

“The main thing for the weekend is we just want to take it one step at a time and work our way through the weekend," Stevens said. "We’re in a much better position than we were in Melbourne, so the main aim is to obviously stick to the run plan and get out and see where we’re at.

"In terms of expectations we aren’t setting ourselves any, so we’ll take it easy at the start and then see where we end up.”

Click here for Friday's gallery from the Malaysian Grand Prix

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter

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.