By Huw Alban
July 21 2006

Next season the Friday practice sessions will change. Rather than two one hour sessions, with some teams running up to three cars, spectators will be treated to two one and a half hour sessions with each team only able to field two race cars. We asked Midland F1 how this will affect them.

The current rule of being able to run a third car in the Friday free practice sessions came into effect at the start of the 2004 season. All but the top four teams from the previous year's World Championship could run a third car in a move hoped to encourage less testing and therefore less cost.

Midland F1 have used their 3rd car to good effect this season, and without it we wouldn't have been able to see the talents of Adrian Sutil and Giorgio Mondini shine in front of a Grand Prix audience. The role of the 3rd car has already been highlighted at length on the official MF1 website.

"Testing the available tyre options at the race meeting is the one of the most important jobs of the third car," says race engineer Oliver Knighton. "The three cars are limited to 7 sets of dry tyres each during the weekend, but as the third car can run all of its sets on Friday, it can complete the most accurate comparison. The results are then given to the race cars. This minimises the amount of sets they need to use in practice, leaving them more new tyres for qualifying and the race.

"The engine in the T-car can be changed. Mileage is not limited, so on Friday, while the race cars run with lower engine performance and limit their mileage to reduce the stress on their engines, the T-car can run more miles with higher power settings. This running, completed with higher power settings, helps to define the race setups, including parameters such as wing level and gear ratios for the race. The T-car also runs development components to prove their performance and reliability before they are used on the race cars, as well as gaining extra setup information with (usually) representative circuit conditions for the weekend."

Recently the FIA announced that it was banning the use of the third car in it's current form during the Friday free practice sessions, although it is unclear exactly as to why. This move, coupled with the extension in time for the two sessions, will effectively turn the Friday into a three hour free free for all test session. Whether it will be entertaining for the paying spectators or not remains to be seen.

''It is the right way to go,'' Renault's Flavio Briatore was quoted as saying at the French Grand Prix last weekend.

But, what does Midland F1 think of the decision? We took the bull by the horns at the French Grand Prix, and got straight to team boss Colin Kolles who gave us an answer.

"From our point of view it's OK," he said to us last Saturday. "because we can still use test drivers on Fridays.

"The only thing we cannot do is use more than two cars. The practice sessions have been extended, so we will still be able to get the same amount of data, but at a lower cost."

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