Adam Cooper F1

It’s understood that both John Booth and Graeme Lowdon have resigned from the Manor F1 team.

There has been no confirmation from the team, and both men are still working in Mexico this weekend and will stay until the end of the season.

It’s believed that the pair have lost faith in the ability of current owner Stephen Fitzpatrick and his business partner Abdulla Boulsien to keep the team alive long term.

While the team has created a potentially attractive package by signing contracts with Mercedes and Williams (for gearboxes and other technology) the financial future remains uncertain.

Aside from the $50m of ‘Bernie money’ there has been very little investment from Fitzpatrick this year. Meanwhile the owners have turned down offers from at least two new investors – sources suggest figures of $50m and $40m respectively – presumably on the basis that they can hold out for more.

Given that most of the staff have long links with Manor and have stayed loyal to the current management it remains to be seen how many will opt to stay on.

Williams believes it can find a solution to the unexpected suspension problem that caused both Valtteri Bottas and Felipe Massa in Austin.

Bottas suffered a failure of the centrally-located rear inertia damper, or i-Damper, in Sunday morning qualifying, and in the race both drivers suffered repeats. The problem only emerged on race day as the drivers did more laps, and at higher speeds.

“There’s a really, really severe bump in Turn 11,” Rob Smedley told this writer. “Which is caused by the track subsiding over the last two years. As the car went over there the i-Damper saw a very high impact load, and basically locked up. It was massively severe, double the severity of anything else we see.

“Once we had Valtteri’s go again in the race, we spoke to the drivers about whether or not you could stay to the left or the right, but it was across the whole track. There was nowhere to go, so either you had to stop the car at that point or wait for it to fail on Massa’s car, which it did.”

Although the Austin bump was an extreme case the team is not taking any chances, especially given that Mexico is a new track.

“First of all you have to understand the problem, we’ve done that, we know exactly what the problem was, and we’ve got a series of measures in place. We’ll be running through those tomorrow in free practice, and seeing what is necessary and what is not around here.

“We’ve had a look at the design itself. Whatever is necessary from a reliability point of view, and whatever isn’t we won’t, because we don’t want to give away performance unnecessarily. There are a few ways to approach the problem to find a solution.”

In effect Williams has a beefed-up component that is potentially more reliable, but could cost lap time: “Something like that, and also in the actual settings of the car. It’s perhaps the way the suspension settings themselves and the way we run, the heave stiffness and the normal viscous damping levels that we run.”

CVC boss Donald Mackenzie has denied Bernie Ecclestone’s regular assertion that F1’s major stakeholder is obliged to sell its stake soon.

Ecclestone said recently that something could happen before the end of this year, with US firm RSE Ventures the entity most closely linked with the sale, in a partnership with Chinese investors.

“No, we’re not obliged to sell,” Mackenzie told this blog. “It’s unlikely that we’ll be here forever, but we’re definitely not obliged to sell. Bernie often says things he doesn’t mean…”

Meanwhile Mackenzie said that the spectacular US GP demonstrated that the sport can still put on a great show when the circumstances are right. Inevitably the recent dominance of Mercedes has put F1 in a negative light in the eyes of many observers, but the US GP did much to redress the balance.

“It was brilliant, wasn’t it? It often happens when it rains. I was pleased for Lewis, and also for the fans. I came from England, I was worried about coming all this way and it not happening! So it was great that it came off, and it was a brilliant race.

“And it also shows you that with the right ingredients, F1 is still fantastic. Close racing. You saw that the Red Bulls with less power and more grip were right up the front, until the slicks came on.”

Mackenzie is also a keen supporter of Ecclestone’s push for a budget twin-turbo V6, which was formally announced this week.

“I know Bernie would like an alternative to the big two. The current situation isn’t that healthy. If we can go to a good alternative engine at the right price, we’ll be very pleased.”

Lewis Hamilton says the closing laps of the US GP were a “defining moment” as he headed towards his third World Championship.

Hamilton was behind team mate Nico Rosberg at a safety car restart with 10 laps to go, and knew that if he could get past, he would win the title today. In the end Rosberg made the job easy by running wide and leaving the door open.

The race had started with some controversy as Lewis leaned on his team mate and pushed him wide at Turn One.

“The last 10 –15 laps were the tough ones,” he said. “What an extraordinary race. I just started out well, very, very close obviously with Nico at the beginning and that wasn’t intentional, we both broke very deep into it, and I understood he was on the outside and in the wet that’s where the grip is, so he was turning and I wasn’t turning so we touched.

“After that just fighting for position, trying to stay ahead. Emotions were just up and down through the race because at one point I was in the lead but I knew I didn’t have it in the car. I was struggling and sliding all over the place and then I fell to fourth and the track was drying and just the most… the trickiest conditions for us.

“And then, as I said, the last 10 laps really… I was behind the Safety Car and thinking, ‘OK, I’ve got 10 laps, the World Championship is right there – how am I going to get it?’. And then I was just head down, everything that I’ve got from all these years. Everything that I’ve built up, everything that I’ve learnt comes into this. This is the defining moment really.

“Of course I could have gone on to other races but for me, I’m kind of like ‘now!’ It’s so close that I could smell it.”

Lewis made it clear that his third title means a lot to him.

“For any driver I think it’s the pinnacle. There’s no further you can go. Your ultimate goal is to win in everything you compete in. It’s to perform at your best and hopefully better than everyone else, so when you do win a world championship it signifies at that particular time your greatness and the people around you. The whole unit. The teamwork. The greatness of that partnership as well.

“I remember when I got my first one. I was just grateful for the first one. I told Ron [Dennis] when I was 10 that I wanted to be world champion in his car and it’s kinda crazy to think that ten years after he signed me I was.”