Drive to survive

Racecar’s deputy editor, a former tyre engineer at Manor Racing, recounts the incredible tale of how the F1 minnow was able to race on in 2015 against almost insurmountable odds – including the crucial role this magazine played in the story

- GEMMA HATTON

The story of Manor Racing began in Monaco, 2014, when the team was still known as Marussia. At that race Jules Bianchi drove superbly to finish ninth; scoring the team’s first ever F1 points. This put it ahead of both Sauber and Caterham in the championship, in ninth, a position it would retain until the end of the season. Which meant some all-important prize money.

‘Up until that point the team had raced for five years without any major funding from prize-money,’ says Graeme Lowdon, former CEO of Marussia. ‘Smaller teams were spending around $120m per year to go racing, but we were having to find virtually all of that through sponsorship because the prize money we were getting was just a nominal amount. Larger teams were probably generating the same amount of sponsorship but, combined with their sizeable prize money allocation, they could spend significantly more to maintain their competitiveness. It was a difficult cycle to break because we were actually having to find the same amount of sponsorship as the bigger teams, but we weren’t benefiting from the ability to spend that on developing the car. Due to the result in Monaco we were finally in a position where we would get paid a significant amount of prize money in 2015, so our business forecasts were literally transformed overnight.’

Tragedy in Japan

But after the highs of Monaco came the lows of the Japanese Grand Prix, where the team’s hero Bianchi was involved in an ultimately fatal accident which devastated both Marussia and the entire racing community. To make matters worse, the first Russian Grand Prix was held a week later, and after this Marussia’s main shareholder withdrew from the team, taking several sponsorship contracts with him. This left Marussia facing a phenomenal financial challenge if it wanted to keep racing.