By Huw Alban
February 25 2006

Watching your team go about the business of testing is an emotional business, and it is easy to lose sight of the fact that it is an opportunity for a team to learn, make mistakes, make changes, and learn from them. Here are my thoughts on Midland pre-season testing. I think fellow Monteiro, Albers, and Midland F1 fans would forgive me today if I was to re-admit to being concerned by the lap times being posted in Barcelona this week.

But strangely enough, I’m not.

Last Tuesday I wrote a story, published here on MF1O, stating that I was worried about the performance of the M16 at Valencia. I was hoping to see gradual progress illustrated by improving timesheets, but it just didn’t seem to be happening.

I had an almost immediate reaction from my sources in the team, but it didn’t matter because suddenly the timesheets on Tuesday showed a different picture.

On Tuesday Tiago was immediately quick in the new car, but since then the pace seems to have dropped away. On Wednesday it was the cold weather, and on Thursday the team ran out of time – it all started so well but then just seemed to fall apart.

Why am I not worried?

Everyone assumes that in testing teams go for the all out lap time – show the competition what they’re made of – but Midland are going about their testing differently me thinks. We know that there is pace in the M16, because Tiago proved it on Tuesday. Why then are the times so low? I’d like to put forward the notion that the team are understating their performance – perhaps always running with high fuel loads all the while – after all you don’t have to go all out on mega quick lap times in order to test setup changes or aero gains. As long as the conditions of the test remain constant then improvements can be evaluated without ever really showing your true hand.

Ferrari do the same thing year on year – they look rubbish in pre-season testing, and then turn blindingly quick when it comes to the competitive race track.

Here is another notion for you. Everyone I speak to in the team is confident in this car, and that confidence remains despite the lap times during testing. Forget about the public press releases, I’m not talking about those; I’m referring to those conversations that I have that give that valuable insight into this team that I carry into this fan site. Those conversations tell me that the team can see real performance in this car, and that they know how to unlock it on the race track.

The doubters out there will say that this is simply putting on a brave face in the face of adversity, but I don’t think so. Despite my enthusiasm for this team I’m of reasonable sound mind and judgement, and I think I know bluffing when I hear it.
And why are we so bothered with test times anyway? Sure, it would be great for my fan ego to see Midland F1 up there at the top of the timesheets, but let’s not lose sight of the fact that this is only testing. Points are not scored here! Midland’s methods will get the first real test (no pun intended) when the team hit the competitive race track on the 12th of March. Then we’ll see for sure whether all this data collected during the last few weeks can bear fruit in quickly setting up the M16 to conform to whatever the track conditions are at Bahrain.

It’ll be interesting to see the team work at Silverstone next week, and I’ll look for clues as to how exactly Midland F1 are preparing for the 2006 season.

Until then feel free to discuss how you think the team are going about their testing on this sites forum.