Disappointing first for MF1
It was a disappointing end to a tough weekend for MF1 Racing, as the team struggled to find both pace and reliability at the Bahrain International Circuit in Sakhir. Christijan Albers suffered a driveshaft failure at the start, while Tiago Monteiro’s car was diagnosed with a terminal transmission problem that forced him into the T-Car.
On a positive note, Tiago Monteiro overcame a myriad of problems to earn the 19th finish of his 20-race Formula 1 career. Despite a complete lack of familiarity with a car that was not optimised for him and being forced to start the race from the pit lane, the 2005 reliability leader once again demonstrated an uncanny ability to get the job done, no matter the obstacles.
Colin Kolles, Managing Director “Today was a very difficult day for the team, but sometimes these things happen, unfortunately. You can’t control luck, so there’s no point dwelling on this. Now, we are looking forward to working together with our technical partners to improve our overall package and demonstrate the performance we know we are capable of.”
Adrian Burgess, Sporting Director “We finished with one car in our first race of the year, Tiago doing a good job to bring the T-Car home, which he’d never driven before. It was an unfortunate start of the year for Christijan, who suffered a mechanical failure on the grid. We’re not happy with the result today, but we’ll do our best to fix it and get our season started properly at the next race.”
Tiago Monteiro (POR), #18
Chassis: M16-04 (T-Car)
Classification / Laps Completed: 17th / 55 (2 laps down)
Tiago Monteiro “Obviously, it wasn’t an easy weekend. The T-Car wasn’t really set up for me, so it was a compromise in terms of seating position and other things, and fairly uncomfortable to drive throughout the race. But I had to remain focused on the race, pushing as hard as I could to bring the car home. We had our share of trouble but, you know, that’s racing. Let’s hope we got all our bad luck out of the way here so that we can look forward to better results for the rest of the season. The car is definitely faster and better than it was last year. It’s not quick enough at the moment, but I’m sure we can find the speed.”
Christijan Albers (NED), #19
Chassis: M16-02
Classification / Laps Completed: RTD / 0
Christijan Albers “It’s a shame that I didn’t get to drive at all, because we were looking forward to gathering more data for Malaysia. It’s really unfortunate, because we’ve never had that (driveshaft) problem before and it’s just one of those things that’s impossible to predict. What makes it even more frustrating is that I think our capabilities were much better than what we showed in qualifying and had we not suffered such bad luck, I think we might have run a reasonable race.”
