Monteiro rues lack of track time

The team had hoped to be able to use the first day of practice to get their set-up and tyre choices sorted, but the loss of one car left them a little bit behind with their programme.

Monteiro, who ended the session practice session 26th overall, said: "It went OK, generally, because I think we improved the car. At least we're going in the right direction, I think. I had limited running in the morning session, so I wasn't able to gather as much information about the tyres as I would have liked.

"As a result, I was dealing with a little bit of understeer at the beginning of the second session and we had to spend some valuable time getting on top of that. But at least the t-car put in a lot of laps, so we should have some good information to analyse from that."

Teammate Christijan Albers was able to set the 24th best time and believes there is room for improvement to help their cause.

"This morning, we were a little bit off the pace, but the team did some good work during the break and we managed to come a little bit closer to the rest of the field," said the Dutchman. "I think there's still room to improve, but we made some big steps and put up reasonable times in the second session. We have to see where we can make further gains, and hopefully have a good race."

Midland also handed Swiss driver Giorgio Mondini his first Friday outing. He was able to complete 42 laps in total to set the 22nd best time in the second session.  

"It was great, absolutely fantastic, but my neck let go toward the end of the second session," he explained.

"I did a good run, and I wanted to do a better one - and to be honest, I believe we could have gone even faster - but my neck just couldn't handle it anymore. No amount of training can prepare you for those kinds of loads.

"I mean, it's fine, it's fine, it's fine, and then - bang - it just lets go, and it's impossible to recover from that. But the team is just amazing, especially my engineers. They really make things easier, because they take time to explain everything. Overall, I think I did a good job. I can go to sleep tonight knowing I helped the team."