Burgess looking forward to the season
As Tiago Monteiro and Christijan Albers gear up for the new season, MF1 Racing may be a new name to Formula One in 2006, but the Midland-owned team has technical continuity from the Jordan days as well as some fresh faces.
“We’ve only had minor changes, really,” Sporting Director Adrian Burgess explained. “We lost a race engineer, so Christijan has a new guy, and I’m confident he will be very good. However, Tiago has the same engineer for the third year on the trot – Bradley Joyce. He was with him at Carlin for the World Series in 2004, and stayed with him last year.”

“Between those two, there’s a bit of continuity,” Burgess continued. “And because they’ve got a year under their belt in F1, they will be more effective and proactive than they were last year, so that will be good for us. Tiago knows the mechanics, and he’s got familiar faces in the same places, and that always helps the drivers. It makes the job easier for him, and he’s settled in nicely already.”

On the driving front the fast and somewhat erratic Narain Karthikeyan has moved on to a testing role at Williams while Monteiro has been joined by former Minardi racer Albers.

“We gave Christijan a fair amount of mileage in December at the tests, to get him used to us and for us to get used to him,” said Burgess. “He’s quick, he’s got some good natural talent, and he works very hard, as well. I think there will be a good little battle going on with those two, that’s for sure! They are both extremely competitive, in and out of the car, and they’ll push each other forward.”

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