It’s been an up and down weekend for the Manor Racing team at the 2016 Spanish Grand Prix, as new developments on the car have helped push the team forward, but still leave the team lacking in pace to break away from the back row of the grid.
Pascal Wehrlein took the honours as highest placed finisher as he out-qualified team-mate Rio Haryanto, the German driver is happy with the developments the team has made but is realistic about his expectations on the high-downforce Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.
“I think our qualifying performance was the maximum for us today.” said Wehrlein. “Our new developments are working well but even so we knew this track would not be our strongest because you really need a lot of downforce here and that’s an area where we still need to keep making improvements.
While improvements have seen a move forward the team are still suffering from problems with tyre degradation. “It appears that we haven’t solved our degradation problems fully. I think this is where we are at this event but there will be some better tracks coming soon for us.”
Rio Haryanto was disappointed with the day as he qualified last on the grid despite giving it everything he had, “We’ve definitely seen some improvements with the new parts we have for this race but not enough to get ahead of the teams we’re competing against at this particular circuit.” said the Indonesian driver.
Dave Ryan, Racing Director was happy with the performance from his drivers but admitted that things could be better. “Pascal and Rio did a good job today, so they’ll be disappointed with where they’re starting the race. Nevertheless, we’ve also seen them fighting hard in previous races to fight with the cars around us, so let’s see what tomorrow brings.” he added.
