President, chairman and new backer discuss how they pulled the team back from the brink and their future plans
Monday 16 March 2015 14:17, UK
The Manor Marussia F1 Team held a press conference on Wednesday to announce their new backer, Stephen Fitzpatrick of OVO Energy, and also their intention to contest the entire 2015 F1 season.
Team president and sporting director Graeme Lowdon and new interim chairman (and ex-Sainsbury's CEO) Justin King were also present to answer questions.
Graeme Lowdon
On crash tests...
“The cars will be ready. The crash tests are ongoing. We’ve block-booked some space at the laboratory to do the crash tests this week. Preparation day is today [Wednesday] and then the testings start.
“The timescale to prepare the car has obviously been incredibly short. But there is a bit of time and capacity in there, so hopefully things will go well this week.
“In terms of the rest of the preparation of the car in Dinnington, the overall car’s on schedule and the main freight dispatch is Friday and like most teams we’ll be sending bits right up until the last minute after that.”
On the spec. of car for Melbourne...
“It’s a new concept of car with a very high degree of carryover – including the ’14 chassis – but fully modified with all of the safety upgrades for 2015. The bulk of those safety upgrades on the chassis are actually to do with the zylon panels that are bonded on the side. The overall car has to meet the 2015 regulations, so that certainly requires a new nose [and] new impact tests on the nose. An awful lot of the other parts, although not the whole car, are carryover so it’s heavily based on the ’14 car but it’s a fully ’15 legal car.
“The car that we were developing for this season last year was well underway when the company stopped operating. So there is a parallel programme to bring all the benefits of that through at some stage. Obviously we’d be keen for that to be as early as possible, but we also have to be practical about it as it’s a fairly major upgrade to say the very least.
“If we could have done it in a way where we’d have a more competitive package from day one then we would have, but we haven’t. This game doesn’t wait and our view was we want to be in the championship from the start and I think this is a very elegant engineering way of doing it. The engineering team have done a really tremendous job.”
On the workforce...
“In terms of the day-to-day operation, it’s very similar to what we had. A lot of people have come back and you’re going to see so many familiar faces in the team. That’s given me a lot of personal satisfaction because nobody’s forced to come back. We’ve had a lot of challenges in the company and one thing I’ve learnt is we’ve pulled together a group of people who are not frightened of the challenge.
“I really hope now we get the chance to really show what can be done because I don’t think we’ve got there yet.”
How many?
“We will be slightly down on numbers in Melbourne, but not by much.
“It was about 175 people [in the team] towards the end of last season and the trajectory is to get back to that, but that’s going to take time.”
Why the need to be in Melbourne?
“As a racing team, you want to be there and compete. You want to be where things are at the whole team – that’s in your DNA. Equally, we’re entering a championship that says you should turn up and race at every event. So to a large extent that’s the activity that we’re engaged with.
The championship starts in Melbourne, we’re in the championship. Our view is that we always have been – we’ve been on every provisional entry list – and our plan has always been that the championship starts in Melbourne, we’re part of the championship and Melbourne’s where we’re going to be.”
Stephen Fitzpatrick
On funding and the budget...
“It’s personal funding for the time being, although we’ve been approached by several individuals and consortiums already who looked at the restructuring last year and walked away from it. So we’re already discussing with quite a few different parties and that’s something we’re very open to. I’m certainly open to other investors that come in over time, but for the time being the investment so far has been personal.
“I know that Formula 1 is seen to be a rich man’s sport. It’s certainly an expensive sport. I don’t think it has to be as expensive. If you want to win the championship you’ve got to be realistic about how much that’s going to cost; I think at the end of the grid that we want to operate on, it’s pretty clear to us what we need to do.
“The team has operated on a modest budget over the last four years and been very successful in the sport. We’re expecting this year that the budget’s going to be between £60-62m. For the first time ever the team is going to be entitled to prize fund money, which covers more than half the budget, and it’s a completely different financial prospect given that the team has finished in 10th place or higher in the last two seasons.
“While there’s been an investment so far, I guess the idea is not for this to be the black hole of the Fitzpatrick family finances for three years and then I have to downsize my house and so on!
“For me the sport is to know what your budget is and to get the best of that budget. It’s not to spend money that you don’t have. Justin and I feel very strongly that there’s a sporting aspect to Formula 1 that we love and there’s a business aspect to Formula 1 that earns you a right to be there and there’s no point thinking that Formula 1 is any of kind of business.”
On the danger of missing the 107 per cent rule in Australia...
“We understand that some of this performance [multiple-second improvements from other teams in testing over the winter] is made up from the new tyre compounds that Pirelli are bringing, which of course we will be using as well. We’re going to understand much more about this the first time we run.
“The engineering team have done an outstanding job and this has been a brave piece of British engineering of making something that seemed almost impossible possible.
“As soon as we’re ready to bring through the 2015 package in the first half of the season to the grid we will be doing it. Right now the story is one of survival and understanding exactly what we need to do to stay alive – that’s been the last three months. We are going to enjoy being on the grid. I don’t think we’re particularly concerned about the 107 per cent rule for qualifying when we look at the combination of the tracks and also the performance that we were getting to at the end of last season.
“We are working with Ferrari to understand how much performance we’ll get from their [2014] end-of-season engine package. So we’re reasonably relaxed about that and we hope in five years’ time when we look back and see the progress we’ve made, the fact that we’ve had to run what is going to be a slower car than we would like in the first few races of this season, I think this will be a distant memory.”
Justin King
On the rumours of succeeding Bernie Ecclestone...
“I’ve never applied for a job where there isn’t a vacancy, and there isn’t a vacancy. That remains the case.
“This [Manor] was a unique opportunity for me to get involved in the sport, which I’m thoroughly enthusiastic about. I intend to do something a bit different from what I’ve done in the past and I’m working on a few things for my day job.
“My interest in the sport now is because I’m involved in Manor. But historically I understand why people made the connection because I was around a lot – but I was around a lot because my son’s a driver.”
