By Huw Alban
June 15 2006

Giorgio Mondini and Christijan Albers completed Midland F1 Racing's three day test programme at Silverstone today, and worked on tyres and aero developments ahead of the next race in Canada. The team are now busy packing up for the overseas trip to the US.

Today was the final day of the current three day test at Silverstone, but unfortunately I could not be there until lunchtime. For the record, the day started clear and bright but low cloud soon rolled in and threatened the day. Fortunately the rain held off and the day stayed warm with a gentle breeze.

Due to the short time that I would be here today, like yesterday I resolved to learn as much as I could so as to keep you all up to date with the latest developments. Fortunately when I arrived outside the team garage, the car was in bits so I had plenty on time to catch up on what had happened in the morning.

Giorgio Mondini had been in the seat all morning, and the team had been working on bodywork aero developments produced especially for the Canadian race next weekend. The morning had passed without incident, and the staff member I spoke to seemed very pleased with the data gathered from the new bits.

Christijan Albers had managed to get his installation lap in before the lunchtime break, and the team were now finalising setup ready for the afternoons work. The afternoons programme was one of tyre development and car balance fine tuning, playing with the ballast.

Christijan put in a number of 3 timed lap runs in order to ensure that the car was to his liking. The team had to adjust many things, but the ones that caught my attention were the throttle pedal, the rear ride height and the front wing angle. During one of his many visits to the garage I noted that there was a small pod fitted underneath the nose of the car, with a light that shone onto the ground. I've seen things like this before on F1 cars at tests and a number of years ago I plucked up the courage to ask someone what it was for. The answer I got then was that it measured ride height and ground speed, but I'd wager that it serves a good many more functions in this day and age.

In addition, again during his visits back to the garage I was able to listen in on the team radio conversations between various members of the team and Christijan himself. He was being very vocal and very descriptive about the behaviour of his car, and was even comparing behaviour to other corners from Grand Prix circuits around the world. The circuit that was mentioned the most was Monaco surprisingly, almost as if the team had found a setup sweet-spot with the M16 during that Grand Prix weekend.

Despite working to get the car ready for some serious work, the mileage was not being wasted. On several occasions Christijan was asked to deliberately coast down the Hangar Straight with the clutch in in order that the team could collect some low speed data. Smart move, I thought.

Christijan's setup laps almost took a turn for the worst as, on one outing, the right sidepod deflector actually fell off onto the track bouncing underneath the back wheel. The team quickly smoothed off and taped up the damaged area, and checked the right hand side of the car for any other damage. What was left of the deflector could be held in one hand, it was that smashed up. At the end of his next run, the tyres came off and were replaced with new ones and it was only then that a deep gouge in the rear right tyre was noticed, with the cut going right down to the canvas. The damaged was put down to running over the deflector and Christijan was very lucky not to experience a puncture.

Work began in earnest at around 15:00 on the development programme. Christijan went out on a set of control tyres to create a baseline for the data. I overheard a comment to Colin Kolles that those tyres were the same compound as that used by Michael Schumacher to gain his pole position time at San Marino.

Christijan was told that his first hot lap on these tyres was very good, but it was felt that he could have gone better and was advised to push harder on his out laps in order to definitely get things up to temperature.

I went trackside at this point and through the Maggotts, Becketts, and Chapel corners I can confirm to you all that he was right on it from the moment he left the pit lane. He looked very very quick through that particular section of the track, and didn't appear to have any particular handling problems either, the car looking as if it were on rails.

When I arrived at lunchtime I overheard a discussion about the team using a new rear brake duct ready for the Canadian Grand Prix. As we all know the Canadian race is very hard on brakes, and Oliver Knighton seemed very keen to give it a go. Unfortunately the team only had one - not one pair, one duct - and it was estimated that it would take 30 minutes to fit. The decision was made to halt the running at 16:00, fit the duct, and have time for at least one good run before the end of the day.

At 16:00 the team did just that, taking a little over 30 minutes to complete the task. Christijan got out for one 3 timed lap run before the session was closed, and finished the afternoon with a dummy start in the pit lane, and mock pit stop outside the garage.

One last observation for you from today. As the test finished, big packing crates arrived at the back of the garage, into which equipment was already being packed. It turns out that some of the race team's equipment was being used for the test session this week, but now time was against them as these items need to be shipped over to Canada tomorrow! Nothing like cutting it fine...

The next public test at Silverstone isn't scheduled until 19th of September and if MF1 are there then we'll probably be here too.

Show your support for Midland F1 Racing by clicking on the banner above and signing up.