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Graeme Lowdon: "Manor must be disappointed with start to 2016 F1 season"

Former Manor Formula 1 sporting director Graeme Lowdon reckons his old team will feel disappointed not to have scored any points so far this season...

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Motorsport Blog

Former Manor Formula 1 sporting director Graeme Lowdon reckons his old team will feel disappointed not to have scored any points so far this season.

Lowdon left the Manor F1 squad at the end of the 2015 season along with John Booth after reportedly falling out with the team's owner Stephen Fitzpatrick.

Booth founded the British outfit as a junior single seater team in 1990 and he and Lowdon have since gone on to form and enter the Manor Endurance Racing team in the World Endurance Championship this season.

Graeme Lowdon

Manor Racing Team, as the F1 squad is now officially titled, secured a deal to run 2016 Mercedes engines shortly before Lowdon and Booth announced they were leaving.

The British team almost withdrew from F1 at the end of the 2014 season but it was saved after the FIA allowed it to use an updated 2015 chassis with its original Ferrari V6 power unit.

The Mercedes 2016 power unit has given the team a boost of around two seconds of performance per lap and there was much speculation over the winter about Manor’s chances of adding to its haul of world championship points, which consists of the two scored by Jules Bianchi at the 2014 Monaco Grand Prix.

Pascal Wehrlein

So far this season Pascal Wehrlein and Rio Haryanto, who both joined the team over the winter, have scored a best result of 13th for Werhlein in Bahrain.

Speaking exclusively to JAonF1 at the Silverstone 6 Hours, the opening event of the 2016 WEC season, Lowdon explained that he believes his old team will be disappointed not to have finished higher up the field so far this season.

He said: “I would imagine they would be a bit disappointed. I know they’re racing Sauber but we’ve been in that position before in early 2014 with Jules and Max [Chilton] and I am assuming that they thought they would be a lot further forward.

Jules Bianchi

“Performance wise they’ve had a big step forward, it’s very clear the engine performance is significant, they’ve effectively made a two year jump in engine performance.”

Lowdon does feel Manor will score F1 points in 2016 but reckons the off-season development of other outfits has hampered the Banbury-based team’s chances of exploiting its Mercedes power early on.

He said: “I’d [have] expected them to be scoring points by now and I’m sure they would have thought so as well and so I think they’ll be pushing. I’m completely convinced they’ll score points this year but they’re going to have to race for them.

Rio Haryanto

“That really shows one thing about Formula 1, nobody stands still and [you] can make a big jump, but the other teams can make a bigger jump.”

“It will become about development race”

Lowdon also described how smaller F1 team’s like Manor need to seize every opportunity that come up, especially early in the year when other squads are struggling with reliability and before those rivals make performance steps in the development war.

He said: “It’s a difficult game, Formula 1. The real opportunities for the smaller teams come in the first three or four races and the races where there is something odd weather-wise or track layout, like Monaco.

Pascal Wehrlein

“You’ve just got to take those opportunities because when the development game gets going it is brutal, absolutely brutal.”

“It looks like Sauber are struggling a little bit and so I think it will become [about] who is going to win that development race. It will make quite a big difference because the opportunities will arise – we’ve already seen that there’s unreliability and this that and the other.”

“We wish them the best of luck.”

Lowdon reckons that a number of F1 teams that will be feeling disappointed by their starts to 2016, but he wished his old outfit fit well in the future.

Rio Haryanto

He said: “Everything is hard in Formula 1, [but] I would have assumed that a couple of the teams, not just MRT, but a couple of the teams towards the back would have been hoping to have a bit more performance that they could rely on rather than having to do it the hard way.

“We’ll see, but we wish them the best of luck.”

Fight for F1 survival

The 50-year-old also warned that the teams fighting at the back of the F1 grid are more than ever battling for their continued existence. This is because the arrival of Haas F1 means that the squad that finishes 11th in the constructors’ championship will not receive any prize money.

Although this will not be the case until the end of 2017 as the American team is yet to sign a commercial agreement with Bernie Ecclestone.

XPB.cc Romain Grosjean

Lowdon said: “The way Formula 1 is structured with the commercial structure, [means] there is effectively a fight for survival going on.

“Now if people drop out of prize money columns, which you can do if you finish 11th, it can cause a really major impact on the income into a team.

“Everyone up and down that grid is in a battle, some for a world championship and some in a commercial battle of some magnitude.”

“Le Mans will be quite a special feeling”

Manor WEC

Manor Endurance Racing team is making its debut in the LMP2 class of the WEC at Silverstone this weekend and its presence in the series means the squad will compete at the Le Mans 24 Hours for the first time later this year.

Lowdon described how competing at the legendary race would be a proud moment for him and the team given the prestige and challenge of the event.

He said: “[Le Mans] is the greatest motor race in the world and in terms of a challenge it’s just something unique and I think it’s brilliant to be able to take Manor to Le Mans and test the team against the best in the world.

WEC Le Mans

“It is such a massive challenge and I’m a huge fan of Le Mans and I’ve been to a lot of Le Mans races [and] I’ve always had admiration for people who take that challenge on and it’s really exciting to go there.

“When we’re on the grid on the Saturday I think it will be quite a special feeling wearing the Manor badge [and] being in that famous venue.

“I know how difficult that race is and you have to treat it with a huge amount of respect, which we do and the same with the whole WEC championship.

Manor WEC

“We’ve come into this championship treating it with the respect that it deserves. Equally, I think it’s a great thing – if you run a racing team you want to be tested in the most difficult environments and that’s definitely one of them.”

What have you made of Manor’s start to the 2016 F1 season? Should the team be feeling disappointed that it has not scored any points in the two races so far? Leave your thoughts in the comment section below or head over to the JAonF1 Facebook page for more discussion.

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