Manor cleared over qualifying no-show

2015 Australian Grand Prix

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The Australian Grand Prix stewards have taken no action against Manor over their failure to participate in qualifying or practice for the race.

The team were investigated under article 13.2(f) of the Sporting Regulations which requires teams to participate in every round of the championship.

Manor supplied a written explanation for their absence and further evidence was supplied by FIA technical delegate Jo Bauer.

The stewards ruled against bringing any sanction against the team on the grounds that the team had “attended the event, brought a significant quantity of material and equipment with it, produced all required documents for checking, taken part in scrutineering and its two cars were eligible to compete, brought sufficient staff to prepare the cars for competition, continued to work and do all within its ability to enable the two cars to compete and prepared the cars to a state where they were mechanically complete”.

The stewards added Manor “would not have been able to achieve a software configuration that allowed the two cars to then be operated in practice or qualifying session, even if they had worked outside curfew requirements”.

Manor had “used all reasonable endeavours to ensure that its cars were able to compete in active competition”, in the view of the stewards.

2015 Australian Grand Prix

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    Keith Collantine
    Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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    11 comments on “Manor cleared over qualifying no-show”

    1. Good to see that a sensible judgement was reached. Let’s hope Manor can have a proper go in Malaysia so we have a proper grid.

    2. The kind of weekend F1 saw in AUS, any sanction against Manor would’ve resulted in major backlash from fans.

      1. @praxis That should never be a consideration. Rules are rules. And the fact is that Manor had satisfied all the requirements of being considered a participant. That’s why the got rightfully acquitted. Good luck for Malaysia to them!

    3. Good decision.

      On current money problems to me the source of it is pretty simple. Most countries F1 is now pay per view. Short term big bucks for Bernie but all i keep reading is ‘there is no sponsors on the cars’ even Ron Dennis said major sponsors don’t exist anymore. Why are they or anyone surprised? Why would a sponsor pay money for a fraction of the product. There is a lot less viewers now due to it only being on sky. Also people that do watch are die hard fans like ourselves who don’t care if it says santander on the car or Playboy, we are more interest in wing angles and ride heights. 5 Years ago the casual viewer bored with what to watch on a sunday saw the logos, your nan would watch f1 to see how Damon was doing. They were a much better audience for sponsors £££ than us.

      add on top of that a complex and very expensive new engine formula at exactly the same time and we are left with not only a few teams on the grid but poor ones having to sell their seats to anyone. Also doesn’t help you now can’t win if you don’t have a merc. If F1 has any sense they would be very worried about what to do if RBR get bored of knowing they cannot win (thats 4 cars!!)

      Is this mess really a surprise? not to me. MotoGP was in a similar mess few years ago and seems to be back on track.

      1. Yeah sponsors have a smaller target with pay per view, new engines cost more but there is a quick solution Give a greater share of the revenues to the teams. Some might say Ferrari should give up some of their payments but before they have to do that CVC should give up more. The amount they should give up would easily cover all teams including Ferrari’s extra payment (they should get this as they have been in F1 over 60 years its a loyalty payment). They would still have a good profit, a more valuable product to sell and all teams would be healthy. Thing is they are a bunch of cheats and twisters in it for the short term. They are near as dammit asset stripping F1.

      2. Duncan Snowden
        15th March 2015, 20:31

        As far as Bernie’s concerned, the lack of sponsors is a feature, not a bug. I’ve said it before: this is all about control. Professional sport is either an entertainment business – selling content to viewers – or an advertising business – selling eyeballs to sponsors. For the last 45 years or so, F1 has been the latter. The trouble with that, as far as FOM is concerned, is that it puts power in the hands of the teams. They control their own budgets, and by extension their own destiny.

        It’s no secret. Bernie’s long been an admirer of the franchise model of American sport, in which the league is all powerful, even taking direct ownership of struggling teams to keep the show alive. He and Max tried – and largely failed – to implement franchises explicitly in F1 a few years back. But if the sport switches to the entertainment model, through pay-TV, the teams become reliant on FOM for their income, and have to dance to its tune. You end up with a de facto franchise system by default. How could the current set of teams possibly threaten a breakaway series, the way Bernie’s FOCA did 35 years ago? With such weak financial backing, they simply can’t afford to. Job done.

    4. Well i think manor no run in australila its because their car get so much trouble either software or hardware i think that trouble came because the adaptation of the 2014 car to 2015 regulation like VSR etc is so hard and the software itself can’t adapt very quick and apparently the car hit trouble but i hope manor could get a very first go at malaysia

    5. The FIA investigating this was just a formality. Of course they are well aware of all the issues and were never going to penalise them for it.

    6. It does bode well for Manor’s organisation that although they couldn’t get the cars running they were still aware of everything they had to do to comply with these regulations.

    7. Even if their cars make it onto the track for Q1 in Malaysia, they could struggle to meet the 107% requirement. I hope I’m wrong about that.

    8. Manor is just a cover up from Bernie.
      Even if they manage to run….they will be a new HRT…but even worse.

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