11/06/2006
NEWS STORY
MF1 Racing claimed another reliable finish in its home race, with Christijan Albers and Tiago Monteiro bringing home their M16s in 15th and 16th positions, respectively.
The team will remain at Silverstone Circuit for three more days of testing next week before crossing the Atlantic for the Canadian Grand Prix at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal.
Tiago Monteiro: "Another finish, but a difficult one. The advantage we gained by making it to the second qualifying session actually hindered us a little bit during the race, because we had to use all the tyres we had available to achieve that. We didn't have any new tyres for the race, so that accounted for the major difference between my times and my teammate's. When we planned our race strategy, we didn't think it would make such a huge difference because of fuel loads and such, but in the end, it was a massive disadvantage. I think we had an amazing car for qualifying, but obviously the balance wasn't that great over a race distance and the tyres never really came to me. It was more of a struggle throughout the race, but we learned from it. We gambled and it didn't pay off, so we'll use that knowledge next time. Overall, though, it was a positive weekend. We had amazing pace throughout and the team made good progress, so I'm satisfied. If we were slow all weekend, perhaps I wouldn't feel that way, but having seen what we've done, I'm pretty confident for the future."
Christijan Albers: "From my point of view, we had decent pace. We had a reasonably good car and we're closer to the field - about 13 seconds behind the mid-pack at the end, I believe. So I think we did a good job, especially considering what a bad day we had yesterday. It's easy to forget that, but if you take those setbacks into account, our performance today seems even better. We had a chance to fight with the Red Bulls and other cars. Our start was terrible: everybody passed me when I let out the clutch and I had to overtake two Super Aguris on the first lap, before Corner 8. Fortunately, it worked out, but there are some tracks where that's not possible. So we have to work much harder on that. Tiago held me up a little bit, because it's really difficult to drive behind other cars, especially on a track like this. But when he made his pit stop, I was able to push ahead and stay out front. I think everyone on the team did a good job today, and if we can do that for an entire weekend - not just on Sunday - then we have a chance to be competitive in Montreal."
Colin Kolles, Managing Director: "Both our drivers did a very good job today to bring the cars home. We are getting quicker, but we must keep working hard to improve. We know which areas we have to focus on, and we will do the necessary things to become stronger."
James Key, Technical Director: "It was good to get both cars to the finish. Both drivers drove a very solid race with no problems. Christijan did a good job to recover from all the bad luck he encountered yesterday, although we did have a little bit of an issue with one of his pit stops. It was good to see us posting some competitive lap times and we were actually gaining on the people ahead of us at the end of the race - we were only 13 seconds behind the nearest Red Bull at the finish. So we were on the same lap as our competitors and lapping as quick, if not quicker, than they were toward the end of the race. If we can improve our starts - because that let us down a little bit - then we can race them competitively. We actually had a race on our hands today; we weren't alone, and that was good."
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