Australia: Midland Qualifying Report

By Phil Giles
April 1 2006

Midland drivers Christijan Albers and Tiago Monteiro have ended their qualifying day in 18th and 20th places respectively at Albert Park in Melbourne.

The teams times all through the weekend show that the car is improving all the time and the team concur with the thought that after time, they will see themselves in a better fight for race finishes and points.

Both cars came up against slower traffic after the Super Aguri team seemed to spend more time on the park, rather than the track.

Colin Kolles:
"It's obvious from race to race that the gap between us and the cars in front of us is getting smaller, so that's a positive sign. We're moving in the right direction and we will continue working hard to improve. Both our drivers are putting in strong performances and the team is also doing a good job. With this kind of effort, I'm sure we will see some better results in the near future."

Adrian Burgess:
"Not a bad effort, but we're not totally happy with it. We were a little bit late getting Tiago's car out due to a few issues we had. The red flag helped us, so he got his laps in, but he was held up by a slower car on both his runs, which obviously didn't help Tiago. Christijan had a small problem with the car, which affected his lap times somewhat. It will be interesting to see what tomorrow brings. I think we're on top of the reliability issues from the last event, so we can focus our energy on finding more pace."

Tiago Monteiro
"It was very annoying, because we were running smoothly all weekend, making steady progress, and then you get to qualifying, with only 15 minutes to make the cut, and we got impeded by traffic. On both tentative laps, I couldn't get up to speed because of slower cars ahead of me. The track had a lot less traction than yesterday because of the rain, but I'm just really annoyed that I couldn't get a run at a clear lap. It's really frustrating, because this heat wasn't indicative of our true performance. We could have gone a lot faster."

Christijan Albers:
"Obviously, I'm not pleased with where we ended up. I ran into some traffic on my fast lap. Actually, I was surprised, because the car that held me up was a Honda and I couldn't believe how quickly I came up behind him. But overall, it wasn't too bad out there. I was encouraged by the performance of the tyres - they were a lot better than the ones I had yesterday. The guys worked hard to solve our problems and the car as a whole was working much better. It's a shame that I spun this morning, because it would have been nice to collect some more information in wet conditions, but these kinds of things happen. This is Formula 1, after all, and there are a lot of electronic aids and other mechanical things that operate outside the driver's control. But, as I said, the car is improving all the time and I'm looking forward to a good race tomorrow."