Midland F1 Racing

Although the Midland name and its MF1 Racing livery are new to Formula One this season, the team is not, having already contested the 2005 championship under the Jordan name after purchasing the team from Eddie Jordan.Jordan, who only entered the unforgiving world of F1 in 1991, had always been regarded as a stepping-stone outfit, with the likes of Michael and Ralf Schumacher, Eddie Irvine, Johnny Herbert and Rubens Barrichello all driving for the team early in their careers.

But over time the team became much more of a force to be reckoned with and, for a brief few years, it was even a team that drivers aspired to. In their first season in 1991 Jordan did surprisingly well despite initial problems which saw them fail to get a car on the grid for the first three races.The team picked up their first points at the Canadian GP with a fourth and fifth place for de Cesaris and Gachot respectively, going on to finish fifth in that year's constructors' championship.

Their second season though was the worst to date as the team picked up just one championship point, which was largely due to an underpowered Yamaha engine. A partnership with the Hart V10 for the next two years and the signing of up-and-coming drivers Eddie Irvine and Rubens Barrichello helped Jordan re-establish some degree of form, and in 1994 they returned to the fifth spot they'd occupied in 1991. A year later the team gained their first podium spots when Barrichello and Irvine finished second and third at Montreal. But that didn't stop the team dropping to sixth place in the championship.

Two years of hard work followed before Jordan succeeded in moving into the premier league of teams despite encountering a few problems along the way. Despite a dreadful start to the 1998 season, by the time of the British GP, Jordan were a force to be reckoned with. The hard work was rewarded at Spa when Damon Hill won the team's first GP after 259 attempts. Their fourth place in the constructors' championship indicated that they'd finally arrived.

For 1999 Hill was retained, whilst Heinz-Harald Frentzen took over the second car and whereas Hill seemed unmotivated and disinterested, Frentzen was a revelation.Fine wins at Magny-Cours and Monza saw the German fighting for the title and third place in the constructors' championship showed the team was still improving. Jordan therefore approached the 2000 season, confident that they were in a position to take on the 'big two' of Ferrari and McLaren.

However, other than a strong performance in Brazil, it was a nightmare season for the Silverstone-based outfit. But in 2001 the team took a major step forward by partnering with the Honda Motor Company, and moved up to fifth in the world championship.The next year though, was a small disaster as with funds rapidly running out, Eddie Jordan had to announce redundancies at HQ and declared he would take a more hands-on approach.

Honda-backed Takuma Sato proved to have little input in setting the car up and the tone of the year was set when he collided with team-mate Giancarlo Fisichella in Malaysia after crashing out in Australia. Added to that the Honda engine unit was dreadfully unreliable. Eddie Jordan was relieved to pick up a Ford deal for 2003, especially after losing title sponsor Deutschepost.Yet he could do nothing to arrest Jordan's slide down the grid.

Although Fisichella won the Brazilian GP, the result was essentially a fluke and a rare bright spot for a team now struggling both on and off the track. 2004 was much of the same ending with Jordan yet again ninth in the championship with eight points less than they'd scored the previous season. There was also personal embarrassment for the team's owner when they lost a court case against Vodafone in which the judge delivered a devastating verdict against the Irishman, describing him, amongst other things, as an 'unreliable witness'.

The debacle merely highlighted the difficulties the team were enduring, and such was their financial woe that there were fears they might not make the grid for the first grand prix of 2005.But January's confirmation that part of the team had been sold to the Midland group shelved those fears. Having purchased a majority stake in Jordan, Russian-born Canadian billionaire businessman, Alex Schnaider (Midland chief), opted to retain the Jordan name and its canary-yellow livery for 2005.

But while the public image stayed the same, the internal set-up did not. Schnaider's arrival saw Colin Kolles instilled as the new top dog, Tiago Monteiro and Narain Karthikeyan confirmed as the team's new 2005 drivers, former F1 driver Johnny Herbert join as the new sporting director and Toyota become the team's new engine supplier. But - for the third consecutive season - the team finished second to last in the championship, bagging just 12 points. And 11 of those were scored at the six-car United States GP where they only had to beat the Minardi to claim third and fourth.

Clearly Schnaider's changes hadn't worked but that hasn't stopped him ringing in the changes in the build-up to the 2006 season. However this time Christijan Albers is the only notable change in the personnel department, while the team's public image has been given a makeover.Not only will the Silverstone squad sport a brand-new red-black-and-silvery livery in 2006, but it will also race under the Midland name. Unfortunately for Midland, someone should have told them a new coat of paint won't cover the cracks for very long.