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Manor F1 team confident of 'business as usual' Malaysian GP

The Manor team is confident of being able to participate fully in the Malaysian Grand Prix weekend after failing to run in Australia

Problems with setting up the IT infrastructure of the team and integrating the various systems related to running the car meant that its car, the 2014 Marussia upgraded to the latest regulations, was unable to leave the pits in Australia.

But after being hauled up in front of the FIA stewards to explain its no-show, the reasons for which were accepted, Manor CEO Graeme Lowdon expects the team to able to run at Sepang.

"We made a lot of progress in Australia, and late on Friday we made some big step changes, so that has given everyone a lot of confidence that we are nearly there," Lowdon told AUTOSPORT.

"Obviously, we ran out of time in Australia but the confidence levels are pretty high that things should be a lot more normal by the time we get to Kuala Lumpur."

The Manor team's cars and equipment is currently in transit to Sepang, but once its garage is set up early in the week before the race, efforts will continue to get everything up and running.

But while there is still work to be done, Lowdon does not expect there to be any major impediments to running.

"The cars go directly to Malaysia from Australia, so you don't have the advantage of a two-week gap that you would in Europe, when you can get the cars back.

"So we won't get access to the cars again until we are in the garages in Malaysia.

"But if we continue at the rate we are going at, things should be a lot more 'business as usual' there."

While there were question marks about why Manor struggled to run given that the cars were sound mechanically, Lowdon stressed the complexity of the job that was being undertaken.

"The cars themselves are mechanically complete, so people can't see something physical, and they think that it looks complete so why can it not move?

"But there has been a succession of issues; earlier in the weekend they were straightforward, just trying to communicate with all of the systems before we started getting things to work.

"It was a tremendous effort from the guys and we have everyone we need to get these things solved, so I'm confident there's a route map to getting it done.

"It's not easy to see from the outside just how much effort is going in because we didn't run.

"But there was nothing to gain from us not running in Australia."

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