03/02/2006
NEWS STORY
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In a flurry of press releases announcing five - count 'em five - new sponsorship deals, a 'junior driver' and a 'nine Friday driver', Midland F1 Racing has finally 'confirmed' Tiago Monteiro as its second race driver in 2006.
Monteiro has been connected with the second seat for some time, having driver for (Midland-owned) Jordan in 2005, and in addition to a number of tests for the Silverstone-based outfit, was even named on the FIA's official entry list published in December.
However, for reasons known only to itself the Russian owned team refused to officially confirm that the Portuguese driver would partner Christijan Albers, even though Tiago was telling all and sundry that the job was his.
One must presume that the reason the team refused to officially confirm Monteiro, was either because it was waiting for his funding to come through, or else the Russian team was holding out for a driver offering a better (financial) deal.
On Thursday evening, twelve hours before the launch of its first car, the team issued yet another press release, this time the Portuguese driver was named:
"MF1 Racing's drivers for the 2006 FIA F1 World Championship season were confirmed as 2005 F1 Rookie of the Year Tiago Monteiro from Portugal and Dutchman Christijan Albers. Germans Markus Winkelhock and Adrian Sutil, as well as Roman Rusinov from Russia, were introduced as the team's test drivers."
All very odd.