According to the interview on Crash, Matt Neal said they didn't get started until December

It's been massive to be honest as we had to start with a clean sheet of paper. We couldn't start as soon as we wanted as at the end of last year, we lost a few sponsors and didn't have other sponsorship in place – and you can't go our and spend money that you don't have. We had to try and do things without spending much money but we only got most of the sponsorship in place in early December so that is when they could start getting stuck in.