Which leads to the pertinent question, how many more teams do we have to see drop out of Formula One?

Manor Racing’s future as a team was in jeopardy today as team owner Stephen Fitzpatrick brought in administrators FRP Advisory. The move by Fitzpatrick emphasises the strong barriers to entry new teams face in the sport as well as the evident costliness of maintaining such a team. With the new F1 season set to get underway in Melbourne on 26^th March, Manor’s potential to be present on the grid looks suspect at best.

The team originated as Virgin Racing back in 2010. At the time, the car was infamous for being the first designed solely on the use of CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) computer simulations technology. Despite this, revelations soon ensued that the car’s fuel tank was too small and therefore to complete races they would have to drive at a considered pace. A baptism of fire. A 14^th place finish from Lucas Di Grassi marked their best result of the season at the Malaysian Grand Prix. Unfortunately, this left them rock bottom of the Constructors’ Championship. Typically, the higher a team finishes in the Championship, the more funding they receive at the end of the season. The difficulty then is that this sets up a veritable roundabout in which the slower teams receive no funding and the larger teams continue their dominance.

Unfortunately, this trend was not to finish with Manor Racing. After operating under the name Marussia between 2012 and 2014, the team once again failed to score a single point in either the 2012 or 2013 seasons. 2014 marked the team’s most successful season in the sport. With a driver line-up of Max Chilton and Jules Bianchi, the team scored 2 points in the Constructor’s Championship and secured 9th place overall. The celebrations in Monaco upon Jules Bianchi’s 9th place finish were telling. A small team that had toiled away for four years had finally scored their first points, it was a wonderful moment. However, Jules Bianchi was to tragically lose his life later that year whilst driving for the team at the Japanese Grand Prix. Not only did this shake the foundations of the Marussia team, it shook the foundations of the sport. It particularly affected the team’s benefactor Andrey Cheglakov who rescinded his financing of the team directly due to the driver’s untimely death.

Marussia missed the last three races of the 2014 season and were officially put into administration on the 7^th November 2014. Stephen Fitzpatrick brought the team out of administration in February 2015. Another fruitless season proceeded and the team once again failed to score a single Constructor’s point. Following another rebrand to Manor Racing MRT for 2016, the team once again had cause to celebrate as the immensely talented Pascal Wehrlein produced a consummate and mature drive securing 10^th place at the Austrian Grand Prix and with it a single Constructors’ point. Such unexpected and frankly heroic performances are paramount to smaller F1 teams due to aforementioned funding. Wehrlein, who was touted to join Mercedes before Bottas was approached, is the perfect example of driver talent exceeding the parameters of an inadequately designed car. Such driver performances are rare considering the emphasis of outright pace is on the design of the car rather than the skills of a driver.

Manor were indeed clinging to 10^th in the Constructors’ Championship going into the penultimate race at Interlagos in Sao Paolo, Brazil. At his home Grand Prix, Felipe Nasr finished 9^th and condemned Manor to the bottom of the Constructors’ Championship where they would remain. This result is estimated to have cost the team roughly £30,000,000 in prize money. Which leads to the pertinent question, how many more teams do we have to see drop out of Formula One?

More certainly needs to be done to ensure that the futures of these fledgling teams are guaranteed. The only glimmer of hope for such small teams is to pin their hopes on rule changes that seemingly are enforced every five years to keep the sport entertaining. The recent engine regulation changes ended the dominance of Red Bull and brought about the dominance of Mercedes. The 2016 rule-change will likely make Red Bull more competitive. A backmarker’s only hope seems to be to entirely discard a season and pour all of their resources into developing a car that can score points post rule-change. Presently, Manor shouldn’t be an attractive proposal for any investor given the team’s history. Another F1 team consigned to the annuls of the sport’s history. More must be done to secure these teams’ futures.