Will Stevens admits Manor may face a fresh struggle to stay on the coat-tails of their Formula One rivals as other teams bring upgrades to the Spanish Grand Prix.
The team, risen from the ashes of the Marussia outfit, is still running a 2014-spec car with last year's Ferrari engine but both Stevens and team-mate Roberto Merhi have managed to remain within the 107 per cent cut-off point of the pace-setters when they have been able to take to the track.
Manor's 2015 car is expected to finally break cover during the summer and, although Stevens is still in the dark on an exact date, he maintains the majority of focus is on developing it and the team may face pain as their rivals show their spending power in the meantime.
"Clearly everyone will be bringing big upgrades here," he said.
"The rate of development in F1 is crazy given how much they find during the year so the gap to the quickest might get bigger over the next few races whilst they are bringing upgrades.
"We were quite comfortably inside our 107 per cent and we still weren't at the maximum for where we could be.
"They are going to be improving at a quicker rate than we are and we will have to see how much they have improved over the last few weeks.
"We knew that was always going to happen. We are focusing heavily on bringing the 2015 car in because that is where we are going to find a massive leap.
"Little upgrades here and there, in the grand scheme of things, don't make much different but we can make a significant step with the new car.
"Clearly we would love to be bolting on upgrades like them but we are in a position where we will have a massive upgrade later in the year."
Stevens is still a relative rookie in the world of Formula One, having made his debut for the now-defunct Caterham team in Abu Dhabi but, despite being a regular at the back of the field, the 23-year-old from Essex is enjoying being on the grid.
"I have made sure I have not made any silly mistakes and have tried to chip away every weekend," he said.
"I arrive here in a good position in myself and I'm happy with what we have got.
"I know we are nearer the maximum of getting the most out of the car. In terms of getting to grips with F1 and how it has gone it couldn't have gone better.
"I will keep doing what I'm doing and hopefully for the rest of the year I can prove I'm ready for the step up to F1.
"It doesn't matter where you are on the grid as long as you are doing the best you can up against your team-mate.
"I can prove everything I need to where I am at the moment so I'm enjoying every minute of it - it is my first year in F1 and I hope it continues. It would be hard to lose motivation because I have worked very hard through my career to get here."
Caterham's former Leafield base is the latest of the team's former assets to be put up for sale after much of their racing equipment was auctioned off earlier in the year - and Stevens admitted he almost got involved to seal a memento of his time with the team.
"I actually thought it would be nice to have my steering wheel from my first grand prix in Abu Dhabi," he added.
"I haven't put a bid in but I spent some time there and if there was anything I wanted it to keep it would have been the wheel from my first grand prix.
"I didn't look into it too much and I don't know how much it would go for but, just talking about it, we said if we could have something to look back on in the future it would be the steering wheel."
Source: PA
