Midland confident of step forward

Although the team spent much of 2005 battling at the back of the grid with Minardi, sporting director Adrian Burgess is adamant that the team will unveil a much-improved car at Silverstone on Friday.

"It's all coming together," said Burgess. "Obviously, at this time of year it's always hectic, but as of today we have things under control and we'll make it on time.

"We feel that we're going to produce a far better package than we did a year ago. We've had 12 months of stability now, we know who the owner is, we know where we're going, and we know what the engine is.

"Last year, the Toyota was really thrown into the back of the previous car. The installation was OK, and the reliability showed that everyone did a good job, but with this year's package we've had that much extra time.

"We've been able to attend to details that we couldn't with last year's car. So everyone is excited and eager to get on with it."

Burgess' confidence over the new car is based on the fact that the M16 is an all-new design, something Jordan did not have for several seasons.

"We're quite happy with what we've seen in the wind tunnel, and by virtue of having a new chassis we've seen some fairly decent gains over the car we raced in China last year," added Burgess.

"Just having a new chassis has opened up so many different areas in the wind tunnel that are now giving us results, whereas we tried things before on the old chassis and they weren't really effective."

Indian Narain Karthikeyan, who drove for Jordan last season before moving to Williams as a test driver, said Midland's new car could not be any worse than the old Jordan.

"They will definitely have a better car than last year. The car last year was almost three years old so it can't get any worse," he said.