The Manor Marussia F1 Team has confirmed that its financial backer is Stephen Fitzpatrick, the boss of the Ovo energy company. Manor’s President & Sporting Director will be Graeme Lowdon, with former Sainsbury’s CEO Justin King as the team’s interim chairman. The team says it has modified cars that will comply fully with the 2015 regulations but will introduce a new 2015 specification car later in the year.
“I want to thank all of the teams, the FIA, Formula One Management, our suppliers and staff and of course all of the fans for the support we’ve received over the past six months,” says Lowdon. “It has been a challenging period for all of us but we’ve come through it and now we just want to go racing again. With formidable new business leadership in Stephen Fitzpatrick and the board presence of Justin King we are now in a great place ahead of the new season. This is a fantastic and very rewarding moment for all those involved with the team.”
King said: “It’s a real pleasure for me to be involved in Manor. I know from the years I spent at Sainsbury’s that with the right people, the right values, and sheer hard work, you can turn any business around. In Graeme and Team Principal John Booth we have all three and I’m fully confident that we can help Manor be competitive at the highest level of racing.”
Stephen Fitzpatrick said: “We’ve all worked incredibly hard to get the car ready for Melbourne and the season ahead. Our fans have given the team amazing support for many years and we want to restore Manor to the very best of racing in the future. I have a lifelong passion for Formula One and can’t wait for the season ahead, with Manor and the team.”
joeblogsf1 
Yay!!!!! Fantastic news!!
+1!
Absolutely, Finally some really positive news about F1. Must be galling for them to say thanks to all the teams, when Force India were so underhand about voting against them. Great to see Manor appear to have a good team of people at the helm.
Completely off topic…
Today there was a raucous crowd at 6 Princes Gate, complete with banners detailing perceived atrocities, waving Bahrain flags and bull-horns protesting the Bahrain GP.
Great News!
With your ear to the ground Joe who’s in line for the second seat?
Good news Yorkshires F1 team is back.
This is a great story,I jam sure there will be a few more twists and turns en route and once in Melbourne, maybe not, all I can say is good luck and hats off to all involved………..
Once again .. why is the ‘ Mobile Speedbump ‘ known as Manor/Marussia F1 returning to the grid just so they can continue to obstruct the right of way of the rest of the teams … with a bunch of less than 2nd rate drivers behind the wheel ..
… in any way , shape or form considered to be … a ‘ Good Thing ‘ ?
Better for all had they been left in the relegation bin where they’ve belonged since day one
As to AlonsoGate .. “get real ” Joe .. as they did with the MS incident back when … all the MD’s involved along with all those who’ve seen the tapes and photos … disagree with you completely . SIS is not Alonso’s problem . What it actually is … is still anyone’s guess … but it definitely is not the SIS McLaren’s propaganda machine has been spewing out … no doubt .. in a rather ineffective , pathetic , uneducated , crude and vain attempt to cover their tracks
[ Logical consistency and genuine research before hand not being amongst McLaren’s Propaganda Machine’s fortes of late ]
* MS’s incident by the way was the result of a bad choice on his part [ going off piste ] but more due to the abysmal so called ‘ safety ‘ and protection of the helmets used for skiing which as anyone that knows can tell you are barely capable of protecting your head from being smacked by a [ flexible breakaway ] gate pole … never mind a direct impact from a rock , tree or any other fixed object . Not … once again the fore mentioned SIS [ FYI ; NYTimes did a superb article on the lack of protection of ski helmets two weeks after Michaels accident ] as you and a few others speculated at the time .
PS ; Two of our best friends are head trauma MD’s at one of the finest head trauma units in the US which is why I can make these statements with such surety and conviction . With no insult intended or implied towards yourself … though towards McLaren’s talking heads is another story indeed
/with a bunch of less than 2nd rate drivers behind the wheel/
Word is that Robin Frijns could get behind the wheel. You were saying…?
This is clearly one for the romantics in the sport, so I can see why you obviously don’t get it. The passion of a minnow team that manages to keep going in the face of adversity (à la Minardi) is admired by many others. That Jules Bianchi dragged a Marussia to ninth at Monaco 2014 – albeit partly, but by no means entirely, due to attrition – was rightly saluted as a great achievement for both driver and team in the current era of mega-budgets and über-reliability. Their pace, by the standards of not-too-distant history, has been positively competitive. OK, for the first half or so of 2015 they will be miles off the pace, but their return to the grid should also be celebrated to some degree. It brings hope – and employment – to a talented and passionate bunch. It would be a shame to see the reward for Jules’s result not sitting with its rightful owner.
Clearly you claim to have spoken to a doctor, but not too sure what “tapes” they have seen as these have been conspicuous by their absence. Why would McLaren drip-feed lie after lie though? Fernando Alonso is entitled to complete patient confidentiality, no doubt, and there may be ongoing medical investigations, but it is absolutely senseless to put out untrue statements followed by contradiction and yet more untruths.
And as for your ill-considered comments re skiing helmets, I will just say you might like to think about what degree of protection they are intended to provide (and that 99.99% of wearers require) to understand whether they are fit for purpose, much like cycle helmets or construction workers’ hard hats…
I don’t really understand why your following F1 at the moment as every post seems to be a moan about it.
Its great that Manor are back because they had just made it into a paying seat when financial difficulty struck. Yes they will be slow at the start of the season but they have to play by the F1 rules and turn up to collect their prize money. The newer Ferrari engine mid season and a 2015 car might just put them a bit closer to Sauber and Force India. Either way they are guaranteed prize money for a few years which might help them build something.
Remember that rolling roadblock did manage to squeeze a car into the points last year.
As for the good old conspiracy theories. Are you saying FormerF1Doc is wrong?
Your depth of second-hand medical knowledge is simply astounding. Lucky for you that SIS does not exist in the USA or it could be dangerous.
Elsewhere it seems to be a danger after one has had an initial concussion as Alonso has, this was explained clearly by the former F1 doc and trauma specialist Prof Gary Hartstein in his various blog entries and videos.
True, the lack of either McLaren or FIA footage is not doing McLaren any favours. We await a leaked video! However there has been overwhelming support from other concussion sufferers to back up the waiting period before the official “ImPACT Baseline” tests can confidently be taken. October 27 2013 on Gary’s blog carries the criteria for a return to racing.
GuitarSlinger, I just have to ask: why exactly are you so bent out of shape about Manor/Marussia? What causes such angst? By the looks of this and many of your other recent posts, you would be far happier with fewer cars. But to quote you, how and why would that be a “good thing”?
Any follower of F1 through the decades knows that there have always been teams on the lower third of the grid. Though you obviously look at them with distain, they are and have always been an important part of the F1 ecosystem. Sure, they may not have a chance to win, but it’s always exciting when one of the minnows has a good day and finishes in the points – as Jules Bianchi did at Monaco last year and Mark Webber in his amazing fifth place finish in the Minardi at Melbourne several years ago. How can anyone not be excited by that?
That’s just barely scraping the surface of how the lower teams add to the overall show and contribute to the overall health of F1. Only the most cynical among us would find nothing redeeming or enjoyable about that. And only the most cynical would like to see F1 devoid of variety.
Hear hear
A characteristic and charmingly bizarre post from Guitarslinger that raises questions firstly as to the motives for him wasting his time posting on a F1 journalist’s blog when clearly he’s not a fan of F1, and secondly to wonder whether he has received a knock to the head himself.
🙂
“Two of our best friends are head trauma MD’s at one of the finest head trauma units in the US”
…which gives them the knowledge to educate you on the subject.
Mercedes, Red Bull, Williams, and Lotus were all backmarker teams once upon a time. I don’t suppose you’d wish they’d never been on the grid either, too?
Errr, someone has to be last! By your logic we’d lose 1 team per season until you’re left with 1. Just think how cool that’d be- they’d always win!!! Amazing!
I’m glad to see them back in the game, but I do raise an eyebrow at King being involved after all those rumours of him being Bernie’s replacement last year.
I don’t get the “you can turn any business around” thing either, at the moment the only thing guaranteeing Manor any money is the lack of an 11th team isn’t it? With the current costs of running a team outstripping back marker competition winnings it just sounds like a money pit to me. Good luck to them though!
Joe, Do you think Justin King is looking for some experience on running teams before moving up to replace Mr E?
Maybe
Then I’m happy to see he’s getting in at the bottom, so he can get a taste of what those teams are up against
Good point.
I’m fearing we will see many lines removed, customer service decline, and a discount war with the other backmarkers
A separate pit lane for “10 world championship points or fewer” ?
That sounds like great news – hopefully this is a long term plan from the investors…..
Great news and I wish them a lot of luck. These are clearly two very clever men, both very successful in their careers and there’s enough evidence to suggest their heart is in the right place in terms of having a genuine passion for motor racing. So we assume they’re not just in it to blag the prize money and then slope off. But does their enthusiasm cloud their judgement in the “mannor” (see what I did there?) of naive succesful, rich businesspeople who have invested in the past in F1 but totally underestimated the resources and effort required to just bump along the bottom of F1, let alone be successful?
All that assumes, of course, that they don’t know something that the rest of us don’t in terms of the F1 team business environment changing in the near-ish future that might make Manor a concern with a realistic long-term future.
A rare good news story for Formula One!
I now see Manor as the modern day Minardi, working minor miracles to simply be there.
Unlikely as Minardi raced at a time when it was just possible for them to take a Pole, lead a race and they were good enough to score points when it was just the top6 who got them……Manor, nice guys, last year’s car and power unit, no chance really. For the sake of good racing it would have been better if Manor could have bought a brace of 2014 Williams cars and used them this year. That would make sense, OVO chucking money down a very large hole simply doesn’t make sense…although I do applaud their racer attitude, it is however, misdirected.
I could be wrong (wouldn’t be the first time!) but I’m assuming that Manor will be using this year’s power unit. I thought that each PU supplier would only be using one spec at a time.
Where’s the money coming from? Ovo Energy is a rather small company and not very profitable, it seems.
The £30m the gentleman is alleged to have paid to get the team out of recievership is apparently his own and has nothing to do with OVO energy, other than I guess the company paid him that money. You’re right though, the point is that by the standards of ‘normal people’, Fitzpatrick is very wealthy, but by the standards of F1, he’s a pauper. I can’t see either him or his company being in a position to pump £30m into a F1 team year after year after year just to tread water. On that basis we’d have to assume they have either some sort of exit strategy (i.e. either sell the team on or attract equity investment) or some insider knowledge that the costs are shortly going to come down.
If they manage to finish the first couple of races, they could steal a point or two again… fingers crossed. KBO!
Can we assume the Manor cards will be Ovo green?
Ever since the F1 Team crisis that came to the fore last year…I shouted from the rooftops that F1 is about 12 teams 24 drivers and 20 race venues around the world. I then watched the awful accident involving JULES Bianchi and then heard the unfortunate news that MAR went into Administration I took to Twitter and contacted @graeme_lowden to support him as an F1 fan to not give up and drag the embers out of the fire and be on the grid in AUS 2015. To create a team you need a leader, a management team, team engineers and 3 drivers to name but a few. New business relationships need to be created with suppliers and sponsors to strengthen and grow the Manor F1 team and brand. Graeme has also had to overcome the FIA and Strategy Group to get team on the grid in the face of opposition (Force India). Graeme Lowdon has worked tirelessly and has fully committed and devoted to getting this project off the ground and I applaud him and his team…If F1 is to survive there needs to be a radical financial overhaul by BERNIE including a flat rate financial same rate for all teams competing for cash at each race and the championship position in order that teams can survive. I do not want to see a repeat of the crisis again but if it did happen then I might have to get on my soap box again
Sorry, I know this will upset a few but Lowdon & Booth are part of the problem with this team as they must of known how much debt the team were in but still they kept running the debt up so they could go racing, didn’t give a dam about their creditors or even worse they did not know how much debt they were in, either way these people should be nowhere near an F1 team.
I assume that they had guarantees by Marussia’s owner on their expenditure. Anyway, I think Justin King is there for a reason: that of making sure that the firm is as efficient as it can.
As for lasting the season… well if I were a betting man, I wouldn’t
who is picking up the debt to the very long list of creditors?
In England, they say that the creditors are going to get “a haircut”, which means they have accepted that getting some cents for the dollars owed is better than getting nothing.
I wonder if the resurgent minnow leadership team realizes they are swimming amongst piranha’s?
I’m really really glad to see them rise from the ashes, especially good people like Lowden and Booth.
However, with the current economics of the sport, I’m seriously doubtful that Fitzpatrick (and anyone else he can get to join him) has deep enough pockets to fund years of being a back-marker before any real progress is seen (ie. enough prize money to turn a profit.)
Honestly, the kind of money needed to compete against even Lotus and Williams is eye-watering, let alone players like Mercedes.
I really want them to be a success but unless things change drastically in the next 2-3 years I just don’t see Fitzpatrick sticking around any longer than Mr Marussia. 😦
I just hope the use of the phrase ‘with sheer hard work you can turn any business around’ doesn’t condemn them to failure…
Brass in this game think they can speak even for the “little boys” who owe them maybe because where else can they buy parts to comply with the new rules but the big boys? They’d take your larynx for sure too, along with. Now this razzmatazz has to be quiet. This is the real drama, and what do we really hear of it? sadly it might embarrass too many to tell it like it is… why TF does the way things be always take something it shouldn’t? There’ll be just one note I’m tuning my ear to, come the next race, to hear some truth. Oh but danger these charades and heaven please no lets not have any worry a insanely faster car might have problems with overtaking, mobile chicane blearghh…. if so then ought to pink slip that driver then, with the wing trick… how ,long will it take for people to realize that there’s not much fun actually racing with mega budgets? Excuse me please, sorry I bought this race already…
If in any way I omitted anything: this is to me racing, and thank you who did this.
Just on a less garbled and passionate note, it has worried me just how much work seems to be outsourced by teams lately. I am wondering if this is to keep headcount down, or to put costs out to invoices rather than investment needed, or because of lack of time to manufacture… but the trend I thought I was observing was that it gets cheaper to bring work in house lately. you might imagine for F1 parts that are made frequently, there is little argument to go to a fabricator. I also still have to look back again at the rules on CFD computation which I last only skimmed, because I honestly think the numbers I saw pinned the top amount of computation at levels I see done in very small shops. I imagine that’s a minefield area though. How valuable to conform a tunnel to a model in the box? Would you choose F1 as a career in these fields if you thought the levels of work attainable even at the top outfits were pretty pedestrian? Maybe AN meant the artificial compute limits, also, when he said they signed their purpose away. I’m guessing so. And no matter how great is the reliability, learning always involved breaking things. F1 doesn’t break any china any more. Again no incentive to work there. So everyone down to the metallurgists is bored and looking away. That is the effect, when you say you can’t play any more. What I believe is we have a over size pool of F1 talent in every area except compute of any kind, for that lot can get jobs in finance and other areas all too easily. immediately almost, if my skills guess for requirements is about right. At worst what we have is many people able to be super engineers but without the depth or incentive or even in their dreams ability to push their limits and abilities. Big teams hire through manufacturers and vast by comparison talent pools there. without a viable smaller team grouping there’s not enough culture to make reaching out possible. all the big teams even had to do was punch one of the little guys in the guts every now and then, and Hey Presto! nobody without a famous marque can win. So There BCE for telling us we come and go and leave you in the ditch, now beg for us to stay! Did that take as long as eight years or so? Any which way I know it, if you don’t make a way to put cars on the grid old school up and ready real soon now, maybe it is the healthier thing to ditch F1, or merge it with WRC.
For teams also read drivers – how to get in and stay there before being ‘bumped’ back eg Max Chilton unless very, very lucky. On this I disagree with Joe – talent doesn’t always win through. I cite Nico Hulkenberg as an obvious example.
I only skim read your post. But if I could chip in 2p’s worth.
It may be limited in what you can do, I believe some on the junior tube rats (Wind tunnel aerodynamicists) even get to see daylight occasionally nowadays.The drone startups and spin-offs that Google, Amazon etc are doing may even offer bigger CFD clusters and a bigger technological canvas (even the road car makers could offer that). The financial sector can offer more money (even now).
But if you’re a racer then there’s nothing like it. It may drive you half-insane and it has way more than its fair share of a***h*les and egomaniacs but you can’t beat it.
I can’t imagine anything better than race car engineering as a career, short of a nice role in the Apollo programme in the early 1960’s.
“Racing is life, everything else is just waiting”.
Perhaps that’s why John Booth, Graeme Lowdon and the others are back for more punishment.
Joe, would you know anyone who can confirm that Manor will turn up with a car in Melbourne that has a compliant rear axle?
Manor have done well in the lower formula, they have brought on at least two world champions (KR & LH) and several other drivers who have made it into F1. With the right support and backing I see no reason why they can’t produce a package to do well. That is, of course, if the other teams let them.
I hope this time round all the guys at the “new team” Manor get paid as well as all the suppliers although it’s worth having a look at the OVO Energy accounts. They make interesting reading.
My energy supplier is Ovo, after a detailed analysis of what was the best, cheapest offer in the UK.
As an F1 fan, I don’t know whether to cheer or cry that some of my Ovo payments will go to support a team. I guess I will cheer as long as the charges do not go up unduly …
The money is Fitzpatrick’s own, not OVO’s, apparently. I guess we’ll see if and when the car is shown whether OVO features as a sponsor. As you imply, I’d suggest F1 sponsorship isn’t very compatible with their ‘value’ image.
Great News!!
Blimey, for a second there I thought Stephen Fitzpatrick was going to be the second driver. That’ll teach me to just read the headline …. 😉
Excellent news!
The most remarkable aspect of the “new” teams was how fast they were. I’m being serious. These teams — with limited finance, often inexperienced drivers, no extra testing time to calibrate computer models with the real world — put up a good show. How many times were the 107% qualifying time (or no time) rules relaxed to accommodate the new teams?
Jules Bianchi scored points last year. Insufficient respect was shown to the team and driver for that achievement.
McLaren finds it difficult to find team sponsors. I dare say that potential sponsors wonder what they might be buying for their money. Commercial sponsors pay for the advertising benefit and cough up accordingly.
The preponderance of pay drivers in middling teams may have further distorted perceptions of cost of company name on the car. Drivers backed by nationalist enterprises have been around as long as motor sport, but much more is being spent to promote the fast local. More, perhaps, than a company might spend for evidence-based advertising with a team that wishes to pick its own drivers.
Who is Stephen Fitzpatrick?
According to the Daily Telegraph (04/03/2015):
“They say to make a small fortune in Formula One you need to start with a large fortune. Energy boss Stephen Fitzpatrick, the saviour of the Manor team, has clearly taken heed of that phrase, throwing in £30 million of his own money to save the beleaguered outfit.”
Note that he is allegedly throwing in £30 million of his own dosh.
According to the Guardian (27/07/2014) Fitzpatrick sold a few shares in Ovo Energy to Ovo Group, a holding company which he appears to control: “An Ovo spokeswoman justified the £2m share transaction by saying the money was needed to buy a family house for Fitzpatrick, a former City trader who now earns a basic salary of £120,000 a year.”
So poor-rich man who can’t afford to buy a house without dipping into his offshore money pot can spend £30 million on an F1 team. Last year, the Guardian valued 4.5% of Ovo Energy at £2 million, making the company worth £44 million. Ovo Group is a separate company and we don’t know what it is worth. Ovo Group has apparently bought the Manor assets.
Stephen Fitzpatrick appears to be somebody who looks after his money. That may not be a recipe for F1 success.
Formula One always manages to keep sucking in those who would appear to have their heads screwed on and then spits them out somewhere down the road when it has emptied their pockets. Also more proof if it was needed that energy suppliers are indeed fleecing the public, i hope his foray won’t be affecting either my bills or service as he takes his eye of his main business. I suspect V J Mallya could give him a bit of advice there.
Having just done a quick check the announcement doesn’t make any sense, Ovo is marginally profitable and has debts of £9million, Fitzpatrick earns a basic salary of £120,000 and recently sold some of his shares to raise the money to buy a house as he had previously been renting. So who’s is the £30 million then ?
I had the same thoughts!
Maybe he pledged some shares to raise a loan?
I hope they can get something good together and build on it for the coming years.
Bit off topic, but with them running such an old car and engine – will they get within 107% in qualifying? If not, who has the authority to let them race anyway ?
They will be fine. The FIA still regulates the sport (in theory)