A new investor in Manor’s sights

This year Manor Racing continues the adventure launched by Graeme Lowdon and John Booth with Marussia, notably by allowing Esteban Ocon to make his debut as a starter since the Belgian Grand Prix last August, replacing Rio Haryanto.

The smallest structure in the championship has been in 10th place in the Manufacturers' standings since the middle of the season, thanks to the point collected by Pascal Wehrlein in Austria. But the result of Felipe Nasr in Brazil, 9th under the deluge of Interlagos, allowed Sauber to regain the advantage in the championship, with the financial aspect represented by the financial allocations allocated to the teams according to their position at the end of the season.

Stephen Fitzpatrick, present at a press conference yesterday in Abu Dhabi, preferred to focus on the future of Manor Racing with the arrival of a potential new investor. “I can't go into too much detail, but we have been in discussions with several investors over the last six months.

One of the things I knew when I arrived was that in the F1 Currently, money equals performance, so I was very open to anything that could bring more funds to the team and help us develop and progress.

And if that meant bringing in another investor, even a majority investor, that was something I was happy to accomplish. We agree on the terms for the arrival of an investor at this time and we are still working on this point. I can not say more. »

The Manor team, which has still not confirmed its drivers for 2017 and which will lose Esteban Ocon leaving for Force India, has also been focused for several weeks on the development of its future car, which leaves a lot of hope for Stephen Fitzpatrick.

“Interestingly, in 2016 we had to build a completely new car: Manor didn't achieve this in 2015 due to the administration period, so it shows, admits Fitzpatrick.

There was such a gap between our situation with the teams in 2014 and this year. We have already taken this big step. I then gave the team very clear instructions in 2016: they had to concentrate their efforts as much as possible on the current program until we were able to score points and try to get tenth place.

From Austria, the team worked exclusively on the 2017 program. We really built up the resources in the team this year, we moved to a new facility, and the wind tunnel at Mercedes led to a big step forward in our aerodynamic development. So the team has hope. »