- Australian GP - FP2
Manor unsure if it will make qualifying
Manor is still not sure whether it will be in a position to qualify for the Australian Grand Prix this weekend after suffering a series of problems with its new car and missing Friday practice.
Manor's management orchestrated a miraculous turnaround over the winter to save the team from administration and bring it to the first race of the season. However, the car has not yet run this weekend and getting it into a position to be able to do so is proving difficult.
Asked directly if the car would run in qualifying, Manor CEO Graeme Lowdon said: "I honestly don't know. But what I can guarantee you is, in terms of commitment and rate of problem solving, we'll be absolutely flat-out maximum."
Lowdon went on to explain the issues the team has faced.
It's not simply a software issue, there are a lot of issues, none of which are a big surprise really when you consider what's been required to get the team here in a very, very short space of time. So I would say that the problems that we are dealing with at present are not unusual for the task we are doing, which is effectively setting up trackside and on-car infrastructure for these cars to run. We'll put our best effort in and deal with each problem sequentially and try to get through them as quickly as we can and try to get running as quickly as we can.
"We're racers and we want to race. That's what we want to do. There's nothing that we're doing that would possibly slow the process down. We want to be on the track as quick as we possibly can. As far as taking time to do a test or something like that, that would have been great but it was just impossible in the time that was available. We'll keep pushing as hard as we can, together with all of our partners and I'm pretty sure we'll be there sooner or later and then we can just move forward."
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