14/05/2006
NEWS STORY
A broken front wing brought Christijan Albers' race to an end on the 48th lap of the Spanish Grand Prix. Christijan attempted to nurse the car home, but was thwarted by uncontrollable handling and retired to the garage with 18 laps remaining.
On a more positive note, Tiago Monteiro took the chequered flag in 16th position for his 23rd finish in 25 Grand Prix starts, extending his reliability percentage to an impressive 92%.
MF1 Racing returns to its headquarters in Silverstone to continue development of the M16 in preparation for the Monaco Grand Prix in two weeks.
Tiago Monteiro: "We're finishing stronger and stronger, so that's a very positive point for us. Perhaps it wasn't very apparent today, but we had a very good car, and again, I have to thank my team, because they did a great job. I really enjoyed my car throughout the race. It's just too bad that Montagny tapped me from behind and spun me off early in the race, because it destroyed my race strategy, unfortunately."
Christijan Albers: "We came into this race knowing that we didn't have the top speed to be competitive. My problem today was that I was gaining time in the corners but losing it all on the straights. To make matters worse, my front wing broke and destroyed some other parts, which made the car undriveable. The car was just becoming too difficult to control. But we are planning to change my chassis for Monaco and we will both have fresh engines, so hopefully that will help."
James Key, Technical Director: "We had hoped for a more competitive performance, but to be fair, this is a circuit that has traditionally been difficult for us. The mix of straights and low-speed corners work against each other in the way you have to set up a car. But some teams manage to do it and this weekend we haven't really done as much as we'd hoped. So, yes, that's a bit frustrating. Being caught behind slower cars meant that we got lapped earlier than we would have normally, and that took a lot of our race time away - roughly two seconds per lap. Once we got caught in that situation, the blue flags killed the lap times further, because our drivers had to slow down and move off the line to let the leaders by. Tiago did a good job to make it to the finish and he was generally pretty consistent. We had a strategy for Christijan which we felt was the right direction to go, given his position on the grid, but the issues he encountered during the race put paid to those ideas. He either hit a kerb or got hit by someone else's flying bodywork; we'll have to analyse the damage to see what it was."
Dominic Harlow, Chief Race and Test Engineer: "Another solid finish for Tiago - 23 out of 25 so far, and counting. We've not quite got the pace yet to challenge our closest competitors, but it's getting there. For Christijan, obviously, the retirement was disappointing. We brought him in because we weren't going to be classified under the 90% rule, so it was pointless to continue at that stage. We'll be looking into what caused his problem, which was related to the front wing. In any event, the damage to the car made it too difficult for him to drive, so rather than risk his safety, we decided to bring him in."
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