Canadian GP: MF1 Saturday qualifying notes

Despite making substantial gains in pace between practice and qualifying, MF1 Racing came up a bit short in qualifying and was unable to repeat its feat of entering the second session, as it had at the British Grand Prix.

Nevertheless, the team feels that a combination of reliability and sensible race management will allow if to perform competitively during tomorrow's race.

Tiago Monteiro:

"As I said heading into this weekend, this isn't the best kind of circuit for our car, so I can't say I'm surprised by the result. The morning practice and qualifying sessions went pretty smoothly for us, actually, and we we're weren't too far from getting into Q2. We did two timed laps in qualifying, and my second run was looking pretty good through the first two sectors - I was six-tenths up."

"But then I lost most of it through the final sector, and I think that's what cost us our chance to break through. Still, I think we're looking OK heading into tomorrow because the car actually feels better on worn tyres, which gives me confidence that I'll be able to run strongly over a race distance."

Christijan Albers:

"Today was not a great day for us, I have to admit. We're really struggling to find the right set-up. Yesterday, I wasn't able to get it together, and I did not get it together today, either. It's been a tough weekend for us so far and I think it's going to be a tough race tomorrow, as well. On the positive side, once again, I have a lot of tyres for the race, so I'll be pushing as hard as I can to make the best of the situation."

Colin Kolles, Managing Director:

"We're quite competitive through the first two sectors, but we're losing a lot of time in the third. It's frustrating but not entirely unexpected, because this is a track that requires efficient aerodynamics. We still have some work to do in this area, but there will be improvements coming soon."

James Key, Technical Director:

"Today was a little bit disappointing. To be fair, we didn't expect to be as competitive here as at Silverstone because of the nature of the circuit. Both drivers did a good job to extract the most out of the car. We learned a bit during this morning's practice session, but the track was still improving."

"Come qualifying, what we suspected with the track and the tyres proved to be the case: Sectors One and Two were very competitive - we're happy with them - but Sector Three has been our downfall all weekend; we're just not quick enough in a straight line. We need to work on that, and it's our biggest issue at the moment. But we'll just have to make a sensible strategy decision for tomorrow now, and make the best of the race."

Johnny Herbert, Sporting Relations Manager:

"It's disappointing that we didn't get through to the second qualifying session, but it was still very close. Now we have to look forward to running a strong race tomorrow, executing a sound strategy and getting both cars home to the finish. This is typically a high-attrition race, so reliability will play a very important role. Thankfully, that's been one of our strengths lately, so we have reason to be fairly optimistic."

Tiago Monteiro
Chassis: M16-04
Qualifying: 19th, 1:17.121 (+1.771 from fastest lap of 1st session)
8 laps completed

Christijan Albers
Chassis: M16-02
Qualifying: 20th, 1:17.140 (+1.79 from fastest lap of 1st session)
7 laps completed

-mf1-