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F1 Brazilian GP: Manor not giving up on catching Sauber after Brazil pain

Manor racing director Dave Ryan says despite his team running a near-flawless race it was powerless to prevent Sauber overtaking it in the F1 world constructors' championship but will continue to fight at the 2016 finale.

After Felipe Nasr secured Sauber's first points since the 2015 United States Grand Prix the Swiss team leapfrogged Manor in the F1 world constructors' standings for tenth place and potentially with it around £30m worth of prize money.

Ryan concedes Manor couldn't hide its disappointment especially having seen Ocon inside the top ten for a large chunk of the race before slipping out after the second restart to finish 12th - with just 3.2 seconds separating Nasr in ninth.

"I think we did everything we could really," Ryan said. "We came here knowing Sauber were in pretty good form and they've had a run of strong results from the back of the grid. We knew it was going to be tough but actually we handled it really well it was only the last restart and last bit of the race which got away from us but up to that point we had it well handled.

"Unfortunately, we struggled a bit on Pascal's car as we couldn't get the tyres working properly. Esteban on the other hand had a really good run and even with three laps to go it looked like he could still have a go at Nasr with him dropping back. Credit to Nasr, he drove a really good race."

With only one race remaining in 2016, Manor must finish at least ninth in the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix to wrestle back tenth place in the teams' standings from Sauber and having called it a near-faultless display in Brazil he feels the team heads to Abu Dhabi with a determined spirit to battle on until the end.

"It is not what we wanted but we can't fault everyone for trying," he said. "As a team we did pretty well which might be a strange thing to say but we were up there for the whole race we weren't dicking around at the back, but it got away from us. That is life. We have got Abu Dhabi to look forward to and we will see how we go there."

Manor currently has just one F1 championship point to its name in 2016 thanks to Pascal Wehrlein's 10th place finish in the Austrian Grand Prix.

Zdroj: crash.net