By Phil Giles
March 12 2006

Midland F1 are kicking themselves after a less than average start to their first grand prix season. A tough weekend is how the team described their first race as Midland, however there were a number of positives to come out of the Bahrain Grand Prix.

Both Tiago and Christijan suffered problems linked to the cars transmission.  A driveshaft failure for Christijan whilst he was sat on the grid caused his retirement from the race and before the race began, Tiago was forced into the T-Car which had been configured for his team mate.  "Obviously, it wasn't an easy weekend." he said.  "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."

It's Tiago's second season with the team and there is a definite difference between the M16 and the EJ15/B.  "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's weekend ended up in the garage, just after the lights went out on the start finish straight.  "It's a shame that I didn't get to drive at all, because we were looking forward to gathering more data for Malaysia." he commented.  "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."

"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." advised Colin Kolles.  "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 enthused about Tiago's continued performance in an F1 car said: "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."

With a week to go, the team should be able to resolve the issues that hit them so hard in their first race.  With track time at a premium over the race weekend, Friday's running will shake out the gremlins in the system and we know that they can build on the ground they have made so far.

Keep plugging away boys.