Australian GP: Manor ordered to explain missing qualifying to FIA

The recently-rescued team made it to Melbourne, but it spent the weekend battling to get its cars to run as it had to set up its software from scratch.

Its hard drives had been wiped in preparation for the adminstrators' sale of its equipment - which was aborted at the eleventh hour when investment was secured.

Drivers Roberto Merhi and Will Stevens were unable to leave the garage for any of the practice sessions or qualifying.

The statement from the officials to the team said: "The stewards request that you provide a written statement explaining why the team did not participate in qualifying for the 2015 Australian Grand Prix after receiving a letter from the FIA on the 20th February".

Team boss John Booth admitted Manor always expected it would be tough to get on track in Melbourne.

"We knew that there was only a slim chance of making quali when we set off," he said.

"They are incredibly complex things these modern F1 cars. We had three weeks to design and make the car legal to the 2015 FIA regulations.

"We had almost no time to fix the racks and electronics and get all those infrastructures built that are required.

"I think we pretty much knew by four o'clock this morning that we weren't going to make it."

Booth dismissed any suggestion that Manor had only come to Australia to ensure prize-money eligibility and never intended to run.

"We are entered in the Formula 1 World Championship and we felt it important to be here to try and compete," he said.

"I can understand people being cynical but if that was the case we wouldn't have brought 30 tonnes of equipment, 40 people, fulfilled all of our contracts with all suppliers, whether it's Pirelli, Ferrari, whoever, with our best endeavours to go round and round a circuit."

He has no doubt that Manor will be able to run from the start of the Malaysian GP weekend later this month.

"We are in a massively different place now to where we were at the start of the week," Booth said.

"We actually have functioning racks now, we can talk to the cars. Even the information on the pitwall is working now.

"The progress of the week has been colossal, it's just not quite enough."