Manor Grand Prix – who? June 12, 2009
The list of entrants for next year’s Formula One season has been announced, and can be seen here.
Two of the new names surprise me a little, CAMPOS GRAND PRIX (Campos Meta racing, see post here) and MANOR GRAND PRIX.
I can see why they included CAMPOS, mainly because they are a based in Spain, so it adds another country onto the list of entrants. Considering there are two races in Spain, it should make more people come watch the races.
MANOR GRAND PRIX though, confused me. After a little Googling, I believe they are MANOR MOTORSPORT (wikipedia), whom are currently an F3 Euroseries team. Although there is not actually anything on their site saying they have entered (here), that said, they weren’t even on the article about new teams on F1.com. I believe they will be headed up by John Booth, who currently heads the F3 team, and Nick Wirth, who is a former owner of the Simtek Formula One team and a former aerodynamicist and chief designer for the Benetton
They have some pedigree about them, as some notable names have driven for them, most notably, Lewis Hamilton in 2004. Lucas Di Grassi raced for them in 2005 and Kazuki Nakajima in 2006. They have also won quite a few races, but no championships in the division.
I’m not sure if this is the same team and will update this as I find more info, mainly because the F3 car uses a Mercedes engine and apparently the F1 car will be using a Cosworth engine. Interesting.
They seem to be teamed with Manor Competition, link, which is a Formula Renault UK team. These guys have been competing for a long time and have quite a good list of names that have driven for them: Lewis Hamilton, Kimi Raikkonen, Jason Plato and Antonio Pizzonia.
The team has been running since 1990, and is the most successful team in history of the Formula Renault UK Championship. There is more history on their website, so go take a look.
Update: More information about the new teams can be found on the FIA website, located here. Thanks to Gary Mason for the link.
Manor Competition are a management buy-out of Manor Motorsport in 2006 (?) by their Formula /Renault team-mangar Tony Shaw.
Details of the three new entrants are on the FIA website:
http://www.fia.com/en-GB/mediacentre/pressreleases/f1releases/2009/Pages/f1_entry2.aspx.
This confirms that John Booth is Team Principal, Nick Wirth the Technical Director and that Manor has two sites, one in Sheffield and the other in Bicester.
Thanks for the link Gary.
You are a prostar detective!
Obviously I’ve come to this late, but surely as a self proclaimed “F1 addict” then you will read at least some print/online media if not all of it on a regular basis.
If you do then your confusion around Manor GP would have been short lived or non-existent as it was well known who the team behind it were even on the day of the FIA announcement. As for the Merc/Cosworth thing, Cosworth dont make an F3 motor, ergo Manor wont be using one. Don’t read anything into that. The whole point that teams like Manor can enter F1 is because Cosworth are doing what they did back in the 60′s and building engines for all.
Campos GP…Adrian Campos, drove for Minardi about ’86ish
Sadly your detective work turned up nothing that most people who read the press would have not already known.