USGP: 1st free practice report

By Huw Alban
June 30 2006

Giorgio Mondini shone for the Midland F1 Racing team this morning at Indianapolis posting the 7th fastest time out of the 16 drivers that posted time laps in the first free practice session. It is obvious that new tyres are an advantage, and that the team have work to do to be more competitive.

Giorgio Mondini was the first MF1 driver to take to the track at the very start of the hour long session. He was followed quickly by Tiago Monteiro and Christijan Albers, and all three completed their installation laps without incident. If normal service is the order of the day, then the team will spend the next 10 minutes checking the cars over before going out again.

Time must be pressing for the team as it was only 6 minutes later that Giorgio took to the track again.

Almost as soon as he did so, the track status turned to yellow - almost repeating what happened to him at Canada. My eyes were glued to the timing screen - a green sector time for sector two appeared, and then another for sector three. Phew, at least the yellow flags were not for him this time.

Giorgio circulated for ages and notched up 9 timed laps with a best time of 1.15.702, some 1.981 off the current pace time set by Robert Kubica.

Mondini took to the track again with just under half of the session remaining. Christijan Albers joined the fun about 10 minutes later, and interestingly posted times some 5 seconds slower than Mondini. Giorgio meantime had improved his fastest time by half a second and had now managed a best of 1.15.202.

Christijan pitted after only a couple of timed laps (unsurprisingly), and with 17 minutes of the session remaining Giorgio pitted also.

He was in the garage for exactly 6 minutes again, but this time joined by Tiago Monteiro. Immediately Giorgio posted green sector times and improved his time to a 1.14.654 showing that the Indianapolis circuit really likes new tyres. For the last 7 minutes of the session all three drivers circulated, and all three occasionally posted individual green sector times showing a path of continuous improvement. Tiago Monteiro and Christijan Albers manged to drag themselves into the 1.15s by the end of the session, but Giorgio's 1.14 time ended up 2.5 seconds off the pace. The team have got a lot of work to do in order to improve for the second session which starts in 2 hours time.

Full timesheets from the first free practice session for the United States Grand Prix:

1 Anthony Davidson Honda 1:12.083
2 Michael Schumacher Ferrari 1:12.458
3 Robert Kubica Sauber-BMW 1:13.008
4 Rubens Barrichello Honda 1:13.090
5 Jenson Button Honda 1:13.189
6 Neel Jani STR-Cosworth 1:13.710
7 Giorgio Mondini MF1-Toyota 1:14.654
8 Alexander Wurz Williams-Cosworth 1:14.745
9 Scott Speed STR-Cosworth 1:14.791
10 Robert Doornbos RBR-Ferrari 1:15.018
11 Tiago Monteiro MF1-Toyota 1:15.091
12 Vitantonio Liuzzi STR-Cosworth 1:15.532
13 Christijan Albers MF1-Toyota 1:15.647
14 Takuma Sato Super Aguri-Honda 1:15.971
15 Sakon Yamamoto Super Aguri-Honda 1:16.116
16 Franck Montagny Super Aguri-Honda 1:16.489

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