Manor Racing director Dave Ryan believes the team can continuously improve throughout the 2016 season to at least battle with the midfield Formula One teams.
Manor expected to start 2016 slightly further ahead than they ended up in Australia with Rio Haryanto and Pascal Wehrlein qualifying 21st and 22nd respectively, 4.2 seconds off pole sitter Lewis Hamilton’s time.
Manor hoped their drivers would be competing at the sharp end of Q3 with the new qualifying regulations after the team managed to secure Mercedes power units and Williams transmissions during the off-season.
Manor is no longer as far back as they were last season compared to the rest of the field but understand work still needs to be done to overhaul that gap completely and improve their qualifying pace.
Speaking to Autosport, Dave Ryan gave a frank assessment of Manor’s progress.
“I think it’s fair to say we are not quite where we expected to be, but I’ll qualify that.
“We were always going to be on the back of the grid [in Australia]. That was the minimum expectation.
“Beyond that, I’d like to think we were capable of being 14th, 16th, which would have been a very respectable position to be, but we weren’t.
“At least we’re attached to the back of the grid, not detached from it.”
Ryan is convinced the team has the backing, personnel, and determination to close the gap to the rest of field throughout this season.
“We’re in a great position, a far better position than we have been in the past,”
“There is a big desire to do well and resource available to improve in lots of areas.
“We know the areas where we are weak, we know the areas we need to work on, but you can’t go down the shop and buy it.
“You have to either create it in-house or invest a lot of time looking for the right solutions. They are not quick fixes, but I recognise them.
“We can see exactly where we need to invest time and money to improve our processes, and we couldn’t do that in the past.
“The team has done a fantastic job just to be around given everything that happened.
“Now, we have to improve, we have to earn a right to be here. We know that.”
