Spyker F1

Spyker

Surname	Etihad Aldar Spyker F1 Team
Companies	Spyker F1 Team Ltd.
Company headquarters	Silverstone ( GB )
Team boss	Colin Kolles
statistics
First Grand Prix	China 2006
Last Grand Prix	Brazil 2007
Race driven	20th
Constructors' championship	0
Drivers World Championship	0
Race wins	-
Pole positions	-
Fastest laps	-
Points	1

Spyker F1 was an automobile racing team that took part in the Formula 1 World Championship in 2006 and 2007 . The team was the immediate successor of the racing team Midland F1 Racing , which in turn took over from the racing team founded in 1991 , the Jordan Grand Prix , at the beginning of the 2006 season . Spyker F1 was indirectly associated with the Dutch sports car manufacturer Spyker Cars . After the team had scored only one world championship point in just over a year, Spyker's Formula 1 involvement ended in the course of the 2007 season. The racing team was taken over by the Indian businessman Vijay Mallya , who took it under from 2008 until its bankruptcy in 2018 called Force India in the Formula 1 World Championship.

Team history

In early 2005, Canadian businessman Alexander Shnaider took over the majority stake in Jordan Grand Prix from Eddie Jordan for allegedly $ 60 million . After the racing team was still run under the name Jordan in 2005 despite the changed ownership structure, it was renamed Midland F1 Racing (MF1 for short) at the beginning of the 2006 season. The team drove with a Russian license this year. Shnaider only led the team for a short time. As early as March 2006, he was negotiating a sale with various interested parties. On the occasion of the Italian Grand Prix in Monza on September 10, 2006, a consortium around the Dutch vehicle manufacturer Spyker Cars NV and the entrepreneur Michiel Mol took over the racing team. The purchase price was quoted at $ 106 million. The team retained the Russian license for the remainder of the 2006 season and competed in the last three races of the year under the name Spyker MF1 Racing . At the beginning of the 2007 season the name was changed to Spyker F1; the team started this year under a Dutch racing license. As with Midland's ownership, the team remained in the former Jordan factory in Silverstone, UK.

Spyker ran into economic difficulties in 2007. On August 14th, the Spyker F1 Team announced that Michiel Mol had left the team and it was up for sale. In September 2007, the Indian businessman Vijay Mallya, who also owns Kingfisher Airlines , and Michiel Mol took over the team. From 2008 it competed as Force India and has been driving under an Indian racing license since then.

Racing history

2006 Formula 1 season

Christijan Albers in the Spyker M16 (September 2006)

After the takeover of the racing team by Spyker was formally completed in late summer 2006, Spyker continued racing until the end of the 2006 season with the unchanged technical package of the former Midland team. The emergency vehicle was renamed from Midland M16 to Spyker M16 and received an orange paint job, but apart from that it was not changed. The car continued to be powered by a Toyota customer engine. Spyker also kept the staff. This applied to both the drivers Tiago Monteiro and Christijan Albers and to the management team, which included Colin Kolles as team boss. During the 2006 season Albers and Monteiro drove no world championship points. This year Spyker was only able to prevail against the newly formed Japanese Super Aguri team, which at times started with outdated vehicles. Even the Italian team Toro Rosso, which used a low-performance Cosworth engine at last year's level of development, was ahead of Spyker in the constructors' championship at the end of the year.

Formula 1 season 2007

Spyker F8-VII at the 2007 French Grand Prix

In the 2007 season Spyker entered with the model F8-VII . The car was based on the Midland M16 designed by James Key in 2006. Mike Gascoyne and John McQuilliam headed technical development in winter 2006/2007. The main change was the use of a Ferrari eight-cylinder engine . In addition to Christijan Albers, Spyker hired the German driver Adrian Sutil as driver . In the 2007 season, the Spyker team wanted to maintain the high reliability of the vehicles with the current F8-VII and achieve as many target arrivals as possible. In the last third of the season, the B version of the F8-VII should provide further improvements and enable the drivers to achieve faster times. The new vehicle was to be used for the first time at the Turkish Grand Prix in Istanbul on August 26, but the car failed the crash test and the premiere of the B-car was postponed by two weeks to the Italian GP on September 9, 2007.

On July 10th, the team announced that Christijan Albers would no longer drive for Spyker. One of Albers' personal sponsors was cited as having financial difficulties. As a result, on July 12, 2007 , Honda driver Christian Klien tested the Spyker F1 chassis over 63 laps in Spa-Francorchamps . For the race for the European Grand Prix on July 22nd at the Nürburgring , Albers was replaced by the previous Spyker test driver Markus Winkelhock , who drove the only Formula 1 race of his career here. Thanks to clever tactics when choosing tires - he was the only driver to start out of the pit lane on rain tires - Winkelhock was able to take the lead in heavy rain. He was able to hold this position for six laps, but fell back to 15th place after a break in the race and then had to end the race due to technical problems. A week later, the team announced the signing of Japanese Sakon Yamamoto , who took second place at Spyker for the remainder of the season. Decisive for this was a good sponsorship package, which the Japanese could show in contrast to his competitors Winkelhock, Klien and Narain Karthikeyan . Even before the commitment, team boss Kolles openly admitted that he was dependent on sponsors.

The Japanese Grand Prix ended Sutil in eighth place. He drove in the first and only world championship point for his team, which at that time already belonged to Vijay Mallya. Spyker finished the season in 10th place in the constructors' championship.

Numbers and dates

Statistics in Formula 1

season	Team name	chassis	engine	tires	Grand Prix	Victories	Second	Third	Poles	nice Round	Points	World Cup rank
2006	Spyker MF1 team	Midland M16	Toyota 2.4 V8	B.	3	-	-	-	-	-	-	10.
2007	Etihad Aldar Spyker F1 Team	Spyker F8-VII	Ferrari 2.4 V8	B.	17th	-	-	-	-	-	1	10.
total					20th	-	-	-	-	-	1

All Spyker drivers in Formula 1

Surname	Years	Grand Prix	Points	Victories	Second	Third	Poles	SR	best WM-Pos.
Adrian Sutil	2007	17th	1	-	-	-	-	-	19th ( 2007 )
Christijan Albers	2006-2007	12	-	-	-	-	-	-	22. ( 2006 )
Sakon Yamamoto	2007	7th	-	-	-	-	-	-	24th ( 2007 )
Tiago Monteiro	2006	3	-	-	-	-	-	-	22. ( 2006 )
Markus Winkelhock	2007	1	-	-	-	-	-	-	-

Results in Formula 1

season	chassis	driver	No.	1	2	3	4th	5	6th	7th	8th	9	10	11	12	13	14th	15th	16	17th	18th	Points	rank
2006	Midland M16																					-	10.
		T. Monteiro	18th	17th	13	DNF	16	12	16	15th	16	14th	DNF	DNF	DNF	9	DNF	DNF	DNF	16	15th
		C. Albers	19th	DNF	12	11	DNF	13	DNF	12	15th	DNF	DNF	15th	DSQ	10	DNF	17th	15th	DNF	14th
2007	Spyker F8-VII																					1	10.
		A. Sutil	20th	17th	DNF	15th	13	DNF	DNF	14th	17th	DNF	DNF	17th	21 *	19th	14th	8th	DNF	DNF
		C. Albers	21st	DNF	DNF	14th	14th	19th	DNF	15th	DNF	15th
		M. Winkelhock											DNF
		S. Yamamoto												DNF	20th	20th	17th	12	17th	DNF

Legend
colour	abbreviation	meaning
gold	-	victory
silver	-	2nd place
bronze	-	3rd place
green	-	Placement in the points
blue	-	Classified outside the point ranks
violet	DNF	Race not finished (did not finish)
	NC	not classified
red	DNQ	did not qualify
	DNPQ	failed in pre-qualification (did not pre-qualify)
black	DSQ	disqualified
White	DNS	not at the start (did not start)
	WD	withdrawn
Light Blue	PO	only participated in the training (practiced only)
	TD	Friday test driver
without	DNP	did not participate in the training (did not practice)
	INJ	injured or sick
	EX	excluded
	DNA	did not arrive
	C.	Race canceled
		no participation in the World Cup
other	P / bold	Pole position
	SR / italic	Fastest race lap
	*	not at the finish, but counted due to the distance covered
	()	Streak results
	underlined	Leader in the overall standings

Web links

Commons : Spyker F1  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Extract from the British Commercial Register
2. ^ Message dated September 11, 2006 on the Times of Malta website (accessed December 9, 2015).
3. ↑ Mol leaves Spyker - Formula 1 team is for sale
4. ↑ http://www.motorsport-total.com/f1/news/2007/09/Offiziell_Mol-Familie_und_Mallya-Gruppe_kaufen_Spyker_F1_07090106.html
5. ↑ http://www.telegraphindia.com/1071021/asp/nation/story_8458258.asp
6. ^ Spyker press release dated July 10, 2007
7. ↑ Spyker press release dated July 12, 2007