Merhi makes debut as Manor WEC team shakes down second LMP2 car
The new Manor sportscar squad shook down its second ORECA chassis at Rockingham on Thursday ahead of its debut in next weekend's World Endurance Championship round at Silverstone
The team's first ORECA-Nissan 05 LMP2 machine ran during the pre-season WEC test at Paul Ricard last month (pictured), but the second was not ready to hit the track until this week.
The crew of the #45 car - Richard Bradley, Matt Rao and Roberto Merhi - all drove during the private session, the first time the Spaniard has had the chance to sample an ORECA.
"It was wet pretty much the whole day, but at least it has given the guys some experience and they got a fair bit of running in," sporting director Graeme Lowdon told Autosport.
"We ran mainly on wets and intermediates because of the weather, but the long-range weather forecast is unclear so from a team point of view it was useful.
"We got dry running at the prologue test and now we got experience in the wet with the other car.
"So in a very short space of time, we are at least going into the first race with a bit of experience of all the different conditions."
Lowdon is confident the new team, which is entirely independent of the Manor Formula 1 operation that neither he nor team principal John Booth have any involvement with, will be ready for the Silverstone race.
But he accepts the team is still learning about how to get the best out of the ORECA with just three full days of pre-season running under its belt.
"We have to view Silverstone purely as a learning experience," he said.
"Of course, it's a race and we will treat it with the respect it deserves and will be pushing hard but we'll be learning an awful lot at the same time.
"It's a different sort of challenge to when you are building your own car, so we would hope to be able to get to grips with the racing as quickly as we possibly can, but it's a question of how quickly we can do that."
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