Manor team principal John Booth has assured critics the marque will be on track and competing in the next Formula One race in Malaysia later this month.
Resurrected from Marussia’s ashes and wrested from the clutches of administration by energy entrepreneur Stephen Fitzpatrick, a reborn Manor headed to Australia for the season-opening race at the weekend with every intention of taking to Melbourne’s Albert Park circuit.
Although the cars passed crash tests and wider scrutiny, Manor failed to emerge from the garage even once as they ran out of time in a bid to rebuild their IT infrastructure, lost after all hardware was wiped days before a planned auction of the team’s assets.
Although the FIA cleared Manor of a potential breach of the rules as they were investigated for failing to fulfil obligations to compete, F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone was left far from impressed.
Ecclestone claims Manor had “zero” intention of taking part and has threatened to charge them for all freight costs which are borne by Formula One Management for all teams for every race.
Despite that, when asked by Press Association Sport on Saturday after the team had failed to take part in qualifying whether Ecclestone was being kept in the loop about their issues, Booth confirmed that was the case.
“Bernie just misses nothing, does he? He has been kept aware at every stage of the process,” replied Booth.
As to whether Ecclestone was supportive, Booth nodded and said: “Yep.”
The suggestion from sceptics was Manor were in Australia simply to lay claim to the £28million owed to them by Ecclestone in prize money after back-to-back top-10 finishes in the constructors’ championship.
Booth, however, dismissed the notion as he said: “We’re entered in the Formula One World Championship and we felt it important to be present in Australia and try and compete.
“I can understand people being cynical, but if that was the case we wouldn’t have brought 30 tonnes of equipment, 40 people, fulfilled our contracts with all suppliers – Pirelli, Ferrari, whoever – with our best endeavours to go round and round a circuit.”
Booth claims another day of behind-the-scenes graft would likely have been enough for the team to turn a wheel, underlining his confidence that Malaysia will hold difficulties.
Asked whether Will Stevens and Roberto Merhi will be on track in Sepang on March 27 for practice, Booth replied: “Absolutely.
“We’re in a massively different place now than where we were at the start of last week.
“The progress was colossal, just not quite enough, but now we’ll get to Malaysia on Monday, start setting up at the circuit on Tuesday, and for sure we’ll be ready to run on Friday.”
ends