Spyker ready to switch on Brackley wind tunnel.

Spyker F1 chief technical officer, Mike Gascoyne has confirmed that the Silverstone-based outfit will be able to start using its wind tunnel facility in Brackley towards the end of this month.

Speaking ahead of the Canadian Grand Prix next weekend, Gascoyne added that it should really help them as they look to develop the successor to this year's F8-VII and move up off the back of the grid.

"The wind tunnel will switch on in the next week or so and then the commissioning process will start soon after," he explained. "By the end of June it will be up and running and within a couple of months of that will go to 24 hour running, which will be a big boost for the team.

"It might have taken a little bit longer than expected to get the modifications through, but certainly once we've got it up and running it will have a big influence on our performance next year as it is where biggest gains will be found."

Asked how the Brackley tunnel will slot into the current Aerolab programme, Mike explained that the two should end up complementing each other. He also noted that they will need to expand in certain areas in order to exploit it fully.

"We are working very closely with Aerolab and, at present, with Lola until our own tunnel is up and running so we are used to integrating two programmes. This will just continue as we run in our own tunnel," he added.

"At the moment we will focus on aero development, but certainly for next year and the future we will also look to expand other departments within the team, which we will need to do to match the flow of parts that will come from the wind tunnel."

As for the last event, the Monaco Grand Prix, Gascoyne reckoned there were a lot of positives to take from it, even if the end result wasn't ultimately very good.

"I think it was a very good weekend. It was the first time this year where we have genuinely outqualified some people on pace and we would have finished ahead of some teams on pace," he continued. "It wasn't just by default or them not finishing.

"Having a good race pace is obviously a step forward and with Adrian [Sutil] we could have finished in front of people. It's a shame that Christijan [Albers]'s problem in qualifying ultimately influenced his race - we went for an aggressive strategy that meant a safety car had to be called for him to get anything out of it. It's disappointing not to have got both cars to the finish, but things are looking up..."