Chapter 3: The Manor Story
Manor F1 came out of the Manor Motorsport team, set up in 1990 by John Booth, a racing team in the junior catergories, and they made the step up to F1 with Cosworth power along with Hispania and Lotus in 2010. Before the season began however, Virgin bought a majority stake in the team so they ran as Virgin Racing in their debut season. Former Toyota driver Timo Glock and Lucas Di Grassi were signed up as drivers for Virgins debut season . However the season got off to an embarrassing start, as the team had designed a car with to small a fuel tank...once this was amended the VR-01 proved to be a reliable car, although they did finish behind Lotus and Hispania. Di Grassi famously went off on an out lap to the grid at the Japanese Grand Prix although he and Glock did score the teams best results of the yea however, with 14th for Di Grassi in Malaysia and Glock the same result in Japan. Despite finishing at the bottom of the standings, Virgin headed into 2011 with high hopes for a better season.
Glock was retained for 2011 with Jerome d'ambrosio (pictured abover in Canada) also racing for the team that year. Despite hopes of moving up the order, the team again struggled to get ahead of HRT and Lotus and they again finished 2011 at the bottom of the constructors championship. However as the season went on they did get ahead of HRT, although it was to late to overhaul the team in the constructors, so they headed into 2012 ready to fight the re branded Caterham team, with a new identity themselves...Marussia.
Glock was again retained for the 2012 season and he was joined by French rookie Charles Pic (the pair are seen above in Bahrain ahead of the HRT's). The MR01 only ran in real anger for the first time in Melbourne for the first race, after a brief shakedown at Silverstone. The team had moved ahead of HRT and now had their sights on Caterham. Glock scored a crucial 12th place for the team at the Singapore Grand Prix, putting them ahead of Caterham in the constructors and putting them on course for their first ever top ten finish in the championship. However, despite comfortably outpacing Caterham for the rest of the season, Vitaly Petrov passed Pic in the season ending Brazilian Grand Prix with just six laps to go, moving his Caterham team back ahead of Marussia. Despite this setback, Marussia had beaten HRT for the first time in the championship, but with HRT folding at the end of the year, they really had to up their game for 2013...
For 2013 the team signed Jules Bianchi and Max Chilton (both pictured above in Shanghai), Glock having to leave as the team needed a driver with backing, hence Chilton. Bianchi, a driver for Ferrari's driver academy impressed very early on, and Marussia's MR02 proved to be comfortably ahead of the Catheram CT03 early on. Bianchi scored a crucial 13th place for the team at the second race in Malaysia, and that was enough to secure the team 10th in the constructors championship for the first time come the end of the year. Caterham did get quicker as the year went on and could beat Marussia as the year went on, but Marussia held their own and that tenth place was never under threat. Even though Bianchi stole the show at the team, Chilton did manage to keep him honest and put in some solid drives and also became the first driver to finish every race in his rookie season. 2013 also marked the final year the team ran with Cosworth power and as Formula 1's new hyrbid turbo era dawned, so did a new era for the team with Ferrari power.
2014, despite a shaky start due to the new regulations regarding the power unit, proved to be the year that Marussia achieved what many had thought had been impossible for F1's new trio...they scored their first points with ninth place in Monaco, thanks to a gritty and quite frankly brilliant drive by Jules Bianchi. This put Marussia ninth in the constructors championship and they were in the running to end the season with $30 million in prize money. However, tragedy struck at the Japanese Grand Prix as Jules had a horrific accident, skidding off in the awful conditions at the Dunlop curve and striking the back of a recovery vehicle retrieving the Sauber of Adrian Sutil, seriously injuring the Frenchman. The accident shook the sport and it particularly hit the Marussia team hard. They vowed though, to race hard at the next Grand Prix in Russia for Jules and to fight for those points he had scored for the team in Monaco. With their hearts in Yokkaichi with Jules,the team raced on with the single car of Max Chilton, although sadly he had to retire after just nine laps.
The team, along with Caterham, then entered administration, and after a failed attempt to race at the season finale in Abu Dhabi, we thought that was the last time we would see Marussia in Fomrula 1. However, Graeme Lowdon and John Booth did not give up hope, and incredibly, after over four months of hard work, the team exited administration and secured an entry for the 2015 season as Manor Marussia F1. At the time of writing, the teams cars were on their way to Australia and Will Stevens, who drove for Caterham in Abu Dhabi (and a former reserve driver for the team) had been announced as their first driver, with a second driver to be announced soon. They had already achieved the impossible by putting points on the board, and they have done it again, defying the odds and surviving when HRT and Caterham both vanished from the grid. Whatever 2015 brings them, it is great to see them back on the grid, and they will no doubt race with Jules Bianchi in their hearts, as the Manor Marussia F1 team. And that is the story of how three, became one.
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