The Midland M16 - Russia's first and last F1 car

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On this day in 2006, the newly-christened Midland F1 Racing team unveiled its first car at Silverstone.

Billionaire Alex Schnaider had bought Eddie Jordan's team the previous year, but had kept the Jordan brand. For 2006 the team took on a new name and also raced under a Russian license for the first time, which theoretically made the M16 the first Russian car in the history of Grand Prix racing.

The teams' drivers were Portugal's Tiago Monteiro and Dutch driver Christijan Albers. Unfortunately neither driver ever managed to finish in the points, suffering 13 retirements between them in the 18-race season. And the team was also disqualified from the German GP for running an illegal... flexible wing!

Later in the season, Schnaider sold the team. No longer running under the Russian flag, it was renamed Spyker F1. After a further sale at the end of 2007, it became Force India from 2008, and then Racing Point in the summer of 2018 when the team was acquired by Lawrence Stroll and his associates.

And now of course, Team Silverstone race's under the banner of Aston Martin Racing!

Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.