No Love In Turkey

Valentine’s Day: a day that you spend with your loved one. In everyone at the Model F1 garage’s case, their loved ones are their respective cars. For Manor-Mercedes, it’s the MM2. Sadly, the MM2 did not reciprocate the love.

Felipe Massa and Pastor Maldonado qualified 5th and 11th, respectively. Maldonado began charging quickly, moving up the grid and dueling with Marcus Ericsson, Felipe Nasr and Sergio Perez. Maldonado eventually provided the team another points finish for the day, with a 7th-place finish.

Meanwhile, Massa ran a consistent race in the top five until tragedy befell his MM2 on lap 24 with fumes coming out of his car. In the garage, the team worked to figure out what the problem was, and confirmed it to be an engine failure, with some components being missing, supposedly having fallen out.

“I’m not sure what happened,” Massa stated. “I heard this horrible noise inside the cockpit and some panicking in the background before [team manager] splendidtree told me to pull into the pits.”

Next week, Manor hopes to overcome the engine failure in Spain.

Valentine’s Day Exchange

The sight of Sebastian Vettel in a Sauber shirt might seem a bit odd. As is the sight of Maldonado in a Lotus hat. Chalk it up to some last-second improvisation by the teams.

The two Manor drivers were already prepared for the day, making cards for each driver. Unfortunately, most of the other teams forgot about the occasion, and had to improvise; when Giedo van der Garde received a card from Maldonado, he had no card available and elected to give him his Lotus cap instead. Likewise, Lewis Hamilton did not have a card for his Williams teammate and decided to give him his old Sauber polo.

No, this is not implying that Vettel will be headed to Sauber or Manor, nor that Maldonado is going to Lotus.