Manor Racing’s racing director Dave Ryan admits he is pleased to see the team finally being able to compete with other teams on the back of Pascal Wehrlein’s excellent thirteenth, ahead of a Sauber and the Force India drivers.
Wehrlein had also excelled during qualifying, starting the race from sixteenth, and run as high as seventh during the race, but Ryan was happy to see the progress made by the team, even since the previous race of the year in Australia.
“I’m really pleased for the team as we’ve come a long way since Melbourne,” said Ryan to Autosport. “We did a good job there, but it was our first race, with all the wobbles that go with it, and to see the progress everyone has made, both in the garage and the way we are operating, the way the drivers are responding, it’s just terrific.
“We feel it’s a good reward for the work that has gone in. Obviously we needed to improve the car from where we were in Melbourne, and we have; we needed to improve how we operate as a team, and we have.”
Ryan admitted it was exciting to see Wehrlein take the fight to other drivers in Bahrain, and is hoping for more progress this weekend when Formula 1 goes to China.
“It’s just a fantastic feeling to be actually competing and looking around at cars and thinking ‘We’ve got him, we’ve got him’,” said Ryan.
“We just have to take little steps at a time. We made a reasonable step in Bahrain, and for the next race in China we have to consolidate, not get ahead of ourselves because as the old saying goes ‘one swallow doesn’t make a summer’.
“We have to make this a process we carry through, and we have to learn how to operate at this level as a team.”
