Christijan Albers may have been happy to finally get behind the wheel of his Midland MF1 car for the first time this winter, but insists that, despite a promising first day, there was still a long way to go before he would be happy.
MF1 Racing began a two-car test at
Jerez with Albers and Italian Thomas Biagi driving two of the EJ15B machines inherited from the former Jordan operation. While Biagi spent time familiarising himself with the car on what was his first F1 test, Albers was at the wheel of an interim V8-powered version of the EJ15B, as the team ran its new
Toyota engine for the first time.
Although a lot of time was devoted to the necessary system checks, the Dutchman completed 51 laps, with a fastest time of 1min 23.19secs and was able to provide some very useful data to the team, even though his best lap wasn't enough to lift him off the bottom of the timesheets.
"I think it was a reasonable day today, but we still have a lot of work to do," Albers admitted, "We have been trying to get the car to suit my driving style, and this is not easy, it takes time. We had some little issues today, but I think this is normal with a new engine and a new package. I am quite happy, especially as it was nice to get to know the team and finally work together. Hopefully, it will get much better by the end of the week."
Albers will be absent from the second day of the test, which continues today with the Dutchman's 2006 team-mate Tiago Monteiro and Belgium's Jeffrey van Hooydonk sharing driving duties.