By Huw Alban
February 6 2006

Midland F1 Racing, after their debut run at Silverstone on Friday, have packed up their new M16 chassis and transported it to the sunnier climes of southern Spain. Here the team will spend 4 days learning about their new toy. At the Midland Toyota M16 launch last Friday, I managed to grab a quick word with a very tired looking James Key. I made a point of asking the teams’ Technical Director what the team would be hoping to achieve at the Jerez test this week.

He advised me that because this car was completely new, the team have to start from scratch with regard to setup. Apparently the team would be concrentrating on car balance, and learning how the vehicles behaviour changes when suspension changes are made.

On the subject of suspension we are lead to believe that the front suspension geometry is something a little special on the M16. The suspension solution is apparently referred to as anhedral (meaning that the front suspension 'droops' down), and was first developed by Mclaren and later adopted by Arrows, and is reported to improve front end aero efficiency at the cost of handling.

In addition, at the Silverstone shakedown, we overheard the team discussing a gearbox software issue which will no doubt receive some attention at the test as well.

The reasons for mentioning all of this are to set the scene for the first competitive times for the M16. It is likely that they will not be competitive in the early days as the team build on their knowledge of the car and how it’s behaviour and performance change relative to setup adjustments. Based on our knowledge of this team so far this year it is highly likely that the car should become more competitive as the winter tests draw to a close, but we’ll just have to wait and see.

According to the Portuguese release of Autosport (and thanks to CRX for this), the team currently only have one complete chassis to use with the No.2 car not being ready until the next test in Barcelona. From the same publication the team’s schedule for the week is as follows:

Tuesday: Chistijan Albers to test all day.

Wednesday: No running as the team are scheduled to strip the M16 down to the chassis and analyse all it’s components in detail.

Thursday: Back on track with Christijan in the morning and Tiago Monteiro in the afternoon.

Friday: Tiago to test all day.