What Are Manor Trying to Achieve in F1 Comeback at 2015 Australian Grand Prix?

Apart from Force India's Bob Fernley (for obvious reasons), you would have to search long and hard to find anyone who isn't thrilled by the presence of Manor at this weekend's Australian Grand Prix.

The return of the team, this phoenix from the flames of the Marussia outfit, for the opening race of the 2015 season is both a victory for, and a two-fingered salute toward, Formula One.

F1, of course, simply needs punchy, popular and independent teams such as Manor to create a contrast against the extravagant, luxurious corporations of Mercedes and Ferrari, providing the David-and-Goliath-style contest that characterises so many sports.

Manor's return, too, highlights the truth that it will take more than a lopsided distribution of revenue to drive the so-called smaller outfits out of the sport—according to ESPN F1, the lesser six teams shared just 37 per cent of Bernie Ecclestone's pot of gold in 2013 as the big guns claimed 63 per cent.

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Above all, the appearance of Manor in the Albert Park paddock has proven that you can't keep a good team down.

Despite the many trials and tribulations the team have encountered since British driver Max Chilton ran Marussia's final lap at last year's Russian Grand Prix—from making 200 staff redundant, as reported by The Telegraph's Daniel Johnson, to the sale of the factory to Gene Haas, as per Crash.net—Manor never gave up fighting.

Those near-death experiences made it all the more remarkable that the team even got to the season-opening grand prix, albeit battered, bruised and sponsor-less.

Merely being in Australia, however, seems to be as good as it's going to get for Manor this weekend, with Auto Motor und Sport (h/t motorsport.com) reporting concerns over engine-related software on the team's computers—which were previously wiped clean ahead of a planned auction of the company's assets—would limit the team's running at the start of the season.

And as both 90-minute free practice sessions came and went on Friday without Will Stevens and Roberto Merhi, Manor's 2015 drivers, taking to the track, you were left wondering what exactly the team are trying to achieve by returning to F1.

The reprieve provided by Justin King, the former Sainsbury's chief executive officer, and new investor Stephen Fitzpatrick, as confirmed by Manor's official Facebook account, has given the team an opportunity to move on from their former life and emerge as a worthwhile, fully functioning racing operation—something that Marussia, for all their popularity, never truly were.

Indeed, Maurizio Arrivabene, whose Ferrari outfit will provide 2014-spec power units to Manor this year, referred to the team as "a new company" and a "completely different story" in Friday's official FIA press conference, reinforcing the notion that the team whose season ended at the Sochi Autodrom last October is vastly different to the one at Albert Park this weekend.

Yet the idea that the team flew two chassis and stacks of equipment to the other side of the world only then to realise that their laptops didn't contain the necessary programs required to get the cars on the circuit is on a par with any of the considerable gaffes made by Marussia.

When asked about the situation in the FIA press conference, Manor president Graeme Lowdon—who along with John Booth, the team principal, has been a figurehead in both joy and despair—explained that the team wouldn't have opted to miss the first race in favour of eradicating their problems in time for the second round in Malaysia, stating:

"

I think it’s really important to be here. This is the championship that we’re part of, and we want to be part of it from the start, right the way through to the finish.

We’re racers and we want to race. That’s what we want to do. There’s nothing that we’re doing that would possibly slow the process down. We want to be on the track as quick as we possibly can.

"

Such an attitude is Manor's greatest strength—why the team are regarded as proper, old-school racers—yet also their biggest weakness.

When the team's exit from administration became inevitable in February, the Australian Grand Prix almost took on a symbolic meaning for Manor as the first race of the year, the stage of their grand return.

With Lowdon lauding the team's "tremendous" effort in "an incredibly short space of time" in the FIA press conference, and the outfit entitling their Facebook statement as "READY TO RACE" and tweeting images of trucks setting off for Australia, Manor were arguably blinded by their eagerness to race, compete and finally get back to the day job, banishing the memories of last year.

An admirable and understandable perspective, of course, but one that is more typical of mere enthusiasts than consummate professionals, especially considering Manor could have missed the opening grands prix of the season and faced no sporting or financial penalties.

The whole point of Manor's return, you suspect, was to learn from the mistakes of the Virgin and Marussia days and use that knowledge and experience to build up a sustainable, credible and efficient racing operation.

And given that the team, in their former life, failed to do that in five seasons on the grid, just getting to Australia was the easy bit.

Fernley was widely condemned in February when he rejected Manor's proposal to return to the grid, with the Force India deputy team principal quoted by BBC Sport as saying the team's plans "lacked substance."

But judging by Manor's no-show in free practice, he wasn't far wrong.