The Manor Formula 1 team has officially dropped into administration due to failures in finding a buyer.
Widespread reports have claimed that the news was delivered to members of staff at Manor’s Banbury headquarters on this Friday morning. The Banbury outfit employs around 200 people.
Allthough the company in danger (Just Racing Services Ltd) is a sister company of the company that is holding the F1 competition rights (Manor Grand Prix Racing), it is doubtful if Manor can be on the grid in March, since it clearly lacks funding.
“During recent months, the senior management team has worked tirelessly to bring new investment to the team to secure its long term future, but regrettably has been unable to do so within the time available. Therefore, they have been left with no alternative but to place JRSL into administration. The joint administrators are currently assessing options for the Group.” stated Geoff Rowley, administrator.
According to Manor they remain highly focused on engaging with interested parties.
Manor finished 11th last season after Saubers Nasr picked up 2 points in Brazil’s wet race to put Sauber on 10th place to secure addiotinal F1 funding. It seems that losing the addiotinal funding pushed Manor just over the edge.
So what about the Helmund deal? As far as we gather, Manor’s owner Fitzpatrick refused a valuation twice. Is Helmund’s strategy to just wait and buy the rights from the bankruped entity?
I suspect that unless someone like Ron Dennis emerges as potential buyer – they’re done.Helmund’s only asset is he is a friend of Bernie, and as Eccelstone has wanted rid of Manor for a while so he could have his 10 team field, I doubt Helmund will get much support. And as for guys like Slim – he gets far more mileage from his sponsorships than he would owning a last place team.
spot on about Slim, 15m a year to have a car plastered in your logos is much better value than having to pump in 75m just to keep it ticking over at the back of the field and take on responsibility of paying staff/etc (sometimes seem like they all really do forget about that part when they decide how nice it would be to own an F1 team).
On that note, it looks like the end of the F1 road for Esteban if no buyer to be found.
I won’t miss him.
If I were Mercedes, I would make them my B-team. A real B team like Toro Rosso is different when it comes to information and data sharing.
For us fans, we rather have another privateer because if there’s an exodus of manufacturors, we’ll have something left.
I’m working on an article about that concept. Have been for a while now. Started page 13 yesterday. Think I’ll make a series out of it 😉