Midland : We're here for the long haul

By Phil Giles
April 7 2006

Current stories doing the rounds about team entries into the 2008 World Championships have cast doubt about Midland's commitment to the sport, among some who are desperate to see the return of an F1 legend.

Post's on this site suggest that Midland aren't credible and that they'll loose their place in 2008. Most of the comments are extremely positive about the teams commitment to the sport but the thread starter suggested that there's not enough investment in the team.

If proof were needed that the team read your comments, we received an email from our Team Source who was frankly livid that people still feel that Midland are not interested.

"Midland is in F1 for the long haul. We are signatories to the Concorde Agreement." said our source.

"We have made a serious investment in the team, as evidenced by our completely new identity and the fact that we have made the second-greatest leap forward in performance on the grid, roughly 1.8 seconds faster than we were last season. (STR is more than 5 seconds faster than Minardi was last season, but that has more to do with loopholes in the engine and chassis regulations than technical development).

There will be more tests performed throughout the year than the team has done in any of the past several years.



There will be upgrades to our wind tunnel, both in scale (bringing it up to 50%) and capability. The addition of a rolling road is also planned. By the time we're finished, it will be state of the art.

There will be significant mechanical and aerodynamic upgrades to the. M16 throughout the season. It will be transformed by the time the season is finished.

We are determined to work hard with our technical partners to continually raise our performance. We have set targets, and we will not be satisfied until they are met.

Those are the facts. Anyone claiming otherwise is misinformed."

Midland have started slowly but we can see that there is an ever growing army of support for the team. They may not be Ferrari, Renault or McLaren (yet) but they are one of only eleven grand prix teams lining up on the grid. If that in itself is not commitment then we don't know what is.