Simtek wrote:Manor hiring some new staff. Things definitely seem to be improving for them at the moment.
Having seen this news I was thinking about something earlier today. Manor are, to all intents and purposes, a "proper racing team" in that they exist to go motor racing. They've done most of the junior categories and given drives to plenty of young drivers, and now find themselves in F1.
When was the last time a team like Manor actually made the graduation to F1? Litespeed were obviously tantalisingly close in 2009/10 before Fernandes bought their entry off them, and had Prodrive been granted entry using customer McLaren cars I guess you could count them. But prior to that how far back do you go? Lola in 1997? Forti in 1995? Pacific in 1994? All of those teams went to the wall within two years of their existence. The most recent one I can think of is Stewart, which effectively evolved out of Paul Stewart Racing.
My point is, there's been a serious amount of time since we last had an actual racing organisation step up to F1, let alone survive for five seasons. When you consider the amount of money needed to run a team these days, what has been achieved is nothing short of remarkable, and totally against the general run of play that the sport has witnessed over the last two decades. Even Stewart were backed heavily by Ford and were only around for three seasons themselves. Thus the last privateer team to enter and then actually survive for five years in F1 is Sauber, which is quite a shocking statistic in my mind.
So good on ya Manor, and let's hope these recent hirings are a sign of better things to come!
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