Manor to use Williams parts next year

Niki Lauda revealed after the Japanese Grand Prix that Mercedes would be powering Manor next season, which has now been officially confirmed.

“It is a great pleasure to welcome Manor Marussia F1 Team to our stable of customers at Mercedes AMG High Performance Powertrains,” said Andy Cowell, Managing Director of Mercedes AMG HPP, “They are a team of real racers with great spirit and impressive determination to succeed.

“We enjoy strong relationships with all our customer teams, and take pride in delivering a standard of hardware and service that reflects the high standards that Mercedes-Benz stands for.

“Furthermore, this new agreement should enable us to keep our supply roster at three customer teams for 2016, which is our ideal level in terms of technical and logistical capacity.

“We will be targeting gains in both performance and reliability for the 2016 power unit and look forward to delivering those to our news customers at Manor Marussia F1 Team.”

Since the team was revitalised after Marussia went into administration at the end of 2014, Manor have been running last year's car (with a 2015 nose so the car is legal) with last year’s Ferrari power unit in. With this new Mercedes deal, they will have the same spec engine that the works team uses.

“I am delighted to announce our new power unit partnership with Mercedes-Benz for the 2016 season and beyond,” said John Booth, Manor’s Team Principal, “Although there were many factors governing our selection of an engine partner to help power us towards our long-term ambitions, ultimately the strength of the Mercedes-Benz package speaks for itself.

“2015 has been a rebuilding year in every aspect of our operation. Although we have not been able to make the incremental strides in competitiveness that the team has enjoyed in previous seasons, we have put in place a strong foundation from which to progress.

“Together with the potential we are seeing with our 2016 car in the wind tunnel, the Mercedes-Benz power unit will assist our return to aggressive performance development with effect from next season.

“I would like to take this opportunity to thank Scuderia Ferrari for their support for our team over the past two seasons. In 2014, together we shared in the momentous occasion of the team’s first points and in 2015 Ferrari supported us to a degreee that was above and beyond the requirements of our partnership agreement.

“Quite simply, we could not have returned to the grid without them pushing extremely hard to support the MR03B, at the same time as focusing on their own 2015 package.”

Alongside the new Mercedes deal, Manor will also be in partnership with Williams who will supply the transmission and suspension to make 2016 a big leap forward for Manor.

“I am also pleased to announce that we will resume our prior technical partnership with Williams Advanaced Engineering, from whom we will receive the supply of transmission and suspension components,” Booth added, “Combined with Mercedes-Benz power units, we are very excited about the strength of our new powertrain package and what it means for the long-term future of our team.”

Because Mercedes want to keep the number of customer cars to a maximum of three, the German manufacturer was waiting for Lotus to terminate their current engine deal with Mercedes as they are expected to be bought out by Renault in the near future.

Manor are also yet to officially confirm their drivers for next year, but we are expecting to see Mercedes' reserve driver Pascal Wehrlein get a seat alongside Alexander Rossi as a result of this engine deal.

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