Formula One news
Midland happy with Albers finish
16 July 2006 / Results / PhotosChristijan Albers delivered his and MF1 Racing's most competitive performance of the season at the French Grand Prix today. Despite encountering transmission problems on his first pit stop, Albers maintained strong pace to bring home his M16 in 15th position. Tiago Monteiro was not as fortunate. The Portuguese driver was forced to retire 11 laps into the race with undetermined mechanical issues. It was only the first time in his F1 career that Monteiro failed to finish in consecutive races.
"It's been a tough, tough weekend, to say the least," said Monteiro. "I've been fighting to find the right set-up for my car, and although we tried everything, it was one of those weekends where we just couldn't get the balance right. My engineers know me very well and we usually find solutions for these problems, but for some reason, we just couldn't sort it out this time. I guess that's racing, and sometimes it goes that way. Unfortunately, I got squeezed at the start of the race and got overtaken by two cars, so I was stuck behind Montagny for a few laps. I was fighting to overtake him, and then, suddenly, something happened at the rear of the car. I have no idea what it was, but the car snapped around completely at the entry to the first high-speed chicane and I went flying over the kerb very violently. That was the end of it. I lost hydraulic pressure and the car died. Now we have a test in Jerez, and we'll have to work hard to tune the set-up and get ready for Hockenheim."
Albers commented, "We had some problems after the first pit stop that prevented me from using the gearbox properly. I lost first gear and was having problems shifting into other gears, which made me lose a lot of performance. That was really unfortunate, because I think that until that point, our performance was quite good. I think that had this problem not occurred, I might have been able to overtake Rosberg, because I had the speed. Still, even with this problem, I wasn't losing too much ground. So we have to look into it to make sure it doesn't happen again."
Team boss Colin Kollesadded, "Unfortunately, Tiago had a problem with his car that prevented him from finishing, which is a shame, because both our cars had strong pace all weekend. Christijan drove a good race and even though he had a gearbox problem, he was still only 4.48 seconds behind Rosberg at the finish. The rest of our rivals were not too far ahead, either. We are making progress, but we have to keep pushing to gain positions."
more news
- 07 Jan.
- 06 Jan.
- 05 Jan.
- 04 Jan.
- 03 Jan.
- 02 Jan.
- 01 Jan.
- 31 Dec. '08
- 30 Dec. '08
- 29 Dec. '08
- 28 Dec. '08
- 27 Dec. '08
- 26 Dec. '08
- 25 Dec. '08
- 24 Dec. '08
- 23 Dec. '08
Homepage
Autodromo Internacional do Algarve 