BGP: Midland F1 Practice One

By Phil Giles
June 9 2006

The British Grand Prix weekend gets underway with the first practice session of the day. As Huw has managed to get to the track for the weekend, it's down to me to provide coverage for the race. Here's the first of the sessions taken from the live timing screen.

Mondini, Monteiro and Albers take to the track early, setting an initial installation lap. Whereas Davidson and Wurz are immediately out and running 1.24 - 1.25s times 6 laps in.

Mondini is out again on lap 2, however there are no times showing. He's slower than Kubica by three seconds in the second sector.

49mins to go.
Kubica goes faster than Davidson.
Tiago and Christijan are still in the garage.

48m
Mondini is 2 seconds slower than Wurz

46m
Mondini less than 1.5s slower than Wurz with a personal best 1.26.554

45m
No action on track at the moment. Montagny has stopped out on the track at Copse Corner (turn 1)

41mins
Yamamoto is 13 seconds slower than Mondini.
12 runners so far.

37m
Mondini back out on track. Improves to 4th from 13 drivers.

35m
Davidson goes back to the top of the time sheet 1:23.264

30m
Kubica about to set the fastest lap with a 1:22.365 - BMW nearly 1s faster than Anthony Davidson's Honda.

28m
Neither CA or TM have set lap times. Are we saving tyres?

25m
Neel Jani goes in front of Giorgio
Davidson sets another fast time but it's slower than Kubica

23m
Yamamoto is behind by 8 seconds, Sato by 14 seconds from the front.

22m
Mondini goes 3rd fastest 1:24.087 (14 laps)
He continues to set personal fastest sectors

20m
The big boys are starting their runs. Alonso has started a run.

18m
Wurz sets a blitzer of a lap. 1:21.946

7m
Truli sets a lap to get in front of Mondini. Times should start to tumble as Honda, Mclaren and Renault start running for the last few laps.

5m
A yellow flag out on track as Mondini's car has stopped out in the third Sector. 

3m
Christian and Tiago back out.
1:24's instantly quicker than Giorgio but still 2 seconds slower than fastest man Wurz
 

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Update.
There were no technical problems for Giorgio.  He made a mistake and went off track.  Huw is standing behind the Midland Garage and has confirmed that the team are just cleaning up the car for the next session which starts at 2pm.

Tiago and Christijan are running a new wing and during their installation laps, both drivers suggested that they were happy with the way the car felt.  They didn't see any need to run further laps during the session but came out towards the end to set a time.

The team also have a new bargeboard underneath the car.  This has the effect of giving a further 15 kilo's of downforce to the car but without any additional drag.