By Huw Alban
May 10 2006

For me, Spain is always a little peculiar. Teams test here regularly and yet still seem to encounter setup problems and all sorts of gremlins, which is bizarre bearing in mind the pounding that they give their equipment on this very track.

Visitors on the forum are already asking about what improvements the team are taking to Barcelona, and common sense suggests that there will be little in the way of changes to the M16 between the Nurgurgring and the Circuit de Catalunya. There simply won't be time to get the new parts out to Spain from the Silverstone factory (note: this was written before the team press release was published and therefore may be a little out of date).

Examination of previous Q&A sessions on the official MidlandF1.com website with Technical Director James Key have revealed a few small clues though.

Question: You mentioned Barcelona. Does the fact that you’ve done some running there give you a little more confidence?

James Key: “It does give us confidence, although we haven’t done a test there since February, and the conditions are different in the winter. As I said, we did the tyre test at Silverstone last week, which, like Barcelona, is very hard on tyres in high-speed corners. Barcelona is probably the hardest on tyres, with Turn 3 and the last two corners. It’s a really good reference track for how much progress you’ve made in the wind tunnel, and is popular for testing because it’s got such a mix of high speed and low speed, and long straights. If you do a simulation, Barcelona is always a good track to run that against, because it’s so general. I think it’s biased slightly toward higher downforce than the norm, as well, which is good for us. I think we perform better at tracks like that than places like Bahrain, where you tend to go for slightly less downforce.”

This suggests to me that the team are quietly confident about their performance chances in Spain, and if the European race is anything to go by then that confidence has real credibility. It also suggests to me that the aero kit used in Germany will also be used in Spain.

I also seem to remember from the European Grand Prix race commentary that it is expected that Bridgestone will also go well at Barcelona, and bearing in mind how quickly the team were able to dial in the M16 to those tyres last weekend then that has to be yet another plus point to take into the weekend.

For a change, I'm not going to hope for anything for the Spanish Grand Prix and see if Midland's luck changes. The only problem is that if it does then I'm in a whole load of trouble...

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