MF1 work on setup and electronics at Jerez

Christijan Albers
By Huw Alban
February 7 2006

The team hit the test track today for the first time since launching their new car on Friday. As predicted yesterday, the team were at the bottom of the timesheets as the behaviour of this new beast is slowly understood.

In warm and dry weather, Tiago Monteiro and Christijan Albers got to work preparing the team for the first race in Bahrain in a little over a month’s time.

Tiago Monteiro put his time in, in the EJ15B chassis putting in yet more mileage on 2006 components and having a stab at aero and setup work.

“Today was a good day, we completed a lot of laps and found out a number of interesting things that will all help us this season,” he said through the team’s official press release. “I've been driving the 2005 Chassis and will again tomorrow morning; much of the work we are doing is for development of the new car. There were no problems and I am very happy.”

Christijan Albers got the honor of driving the new M16 car assisting the team in learning how this car needs to be set up in order to get the most from it. “Today we were working on different set-ups, the guys are working very hard and it's a good chance to test a variety of areas on the car including electronics. I was happy with today's run and the new car is giving me confidence, which is great for the first day of testing,” he has been quoted as saying.

According to the Portuguese Autosport the team are due to strip down the M16 chassis tomorrow for analysis, although Tiago claims that he’s getting some time in it in the afternoon.

Despite being at the bottom of the timesheets there is one, very important, encouraging thing that we fans can take away today: the new M16 ran without any reported problems. This a strong indicator of reliability in my view, and if this is maintained throughout the week a very strong sign for the coming season.

The full list of times from the test are given below:

1 . A. Wurz - Williams Cosworth FW28 - 1:18.144 (+ 0.000 ) - 48 laps
2 . J. Button - Honda RA106 - 1:18.250 (+ 0.106 ) - 88 laps
3 . R. Barrichello - Honda RA106 - 1:18.626 (+ 0.482 ) - 112 laps
4 . N. Rosberg - Williams Cosworth FW28 - 1:18.735 (+ 0.591 ) - 84 laps
5 . R. Zonta - Toyota TF106 - 1:20.162 (+ 2.018 ) - 85 laps
6 . O. Panis - Toyota TF106 - 1:20.339 (+ 2.195 ) - 79 laps
7 . C. Albers - MF1 Racing Toyota M16 - 1:21.511 (+ 3.367 ) - 74 laps
8 . T. Monteiro - MF1 Racing Toyota EJ15B - 1:22.318 (+ 4.174 ) - 71 laps.

Times courtesy of Circuit de Jerez.