2006 French Grand Prix - Race Report
Christijan 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.
The team now heads to Jerez, Spain, for three days of testing
between July 19-21 before returning to competition in two
weeks' time at Hockenheim for the German Grand Prix.
Tiago Monteiro (POR), Car #18 (Chassis: M16-03)
Starting Position: 20th
Classification: DNF, 11 laps completed (+59 laps)
Fastest Lap: 1:21.663 at 14:14:14, 21st overall (+4.552 from
fastest lap of the race)
Quote: "It's been a tough, tough weekend, to say the
least. 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."
Christijan Albers (NED), Car #19 (Chassis: M16-02)
Starting Position: 15th
Classification: 15th, 68 laps completed (+2 laps)
Fastest Lap: 1:19.356 at 15:33:58, 18th overall (+2.245 from
fastest lap of the race)
Quote: "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."
Colin Kolles, Managing Director: "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."
James Key, Technical Director: "It
wasn't a bad afternoon in terms of lap times, etc., but not
good for our final result, really. Christijan was racing with
a competitive pack of cars - I think there were seven cars
all challenging for 12th place, at one point - but sadly,
we had an issue during our pit stop that lost him a fair amount
of time and dropped him behind that group. But he did a good
job to catch up to them toward the end and run competitively
for the duration, even with the problems he had. That's somewhat
satisfying, but as I said yesterday, we need to stay with
them to be in a position to race. Tiago had a problem during
the race that led to his retirement, which we're investigating
now. Hopefully, we'll figure out what the problem is and be
in good shape heading into our test in Jerez where we'll have
a lot of test items in the programme. We can take heart from
the performance we've shown this weekend, but we need to improve
our track position, which is our main problem right now."
Johnny Herbert, Sporting Relations Manager:
"Considering the circumstances, we did a pretty good
job this weekend. We had genuine race pace, which I think
could have ended up being better had we not run into the problems
that cropped up. The final result isn't really an indication
of where we are, because in terms of performance, it was one
of our best efforts of the season. I think it's another step
forward, one that we can take that into the next round in
Hockenheim and hopefully build on."
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