Manor still unsure on new car launch

Manor sporting director Graeme Lowdon says the team is still analysing when would be best to launch its 2015 car.

The former Marussia team is using a modified version of last year’s car in order to participate in the opening rounds of the season having seen its plans to simply run the 2014 car blocked by the Strategy Group. Manor plans on introducing a brand new 2015 car - which will also incorporate this year’s Ferrari power unit - at some point later in the season, with the mid-season break originally pencilled in.

However, with teams limited to four power units per season at present and Ferrari able to upgrade its engine using tokens during the year, Lowdon told F1i it makes picking a time to launch the new car difficult.

“There’s quite a lot parameters including the mid-season break because we can’t do anything!” London said, referencing the mandatory two-week factory shutdown. “That’s exactly the kind of discussion that we’ve had. There are so many parameters, when would the ideal time be? I tell you what, it would have been January 2015. That would have been the ideal time and there was a point last year when we were on schedule for that.

“So there’s a lot of parameters, it’s not clear yet what is the optimum. There was even talk this weekend of a change in the number of engines this year so that changes our thinking again. So there’s a lot of work being done on it at the moment so we’ll see, but what is clear is that there are quite clearly some performance rewards down that avenue. So it gives us something to evaluate.”

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