FEBRUARY 6, 2005

Midland looks for a Russian driver

The Midland F1 operation says it would like to run a Russian driver in tests and has named Roman Rusinov as the man most likely. Rusinov is a sports car driver at the moment but comes from the French Formula Campus school and so has at least some credibility. He raced in Fomula Renault with Graff Racing in 2000 and 2001 and did well although his programme was somewhat disupted by his business studies at the Institute Superior deÊGestion inÊParis. He then moved to Formula Palmer Audi in Britain and ended up third in the championship in 2002. He moved to Europeean Formula 3000 in 2003 and started from pole position at his first event and hit the headlines in Russia later that year when he won a class victory in the Le Mans 1000km race at the wheel of a Courage which he shared with Win Eyckmans and Enrico Muscioni. Last year he joined JMB Racing and raced a Ferrari 360 Modena to win the GT Class of the LMES series.

Obviously talented, Rusinov needs to get back into open-wheeler racer if he is to be taken seriously in F1 circles and so a link with Midland may be helpful to get him finance to race in GP2, he obvious place for him to be at the moment.

Rusinov is the son of Alexander Rusinov, aÊwell known mountaineer and aÊthree time participant inÊthe Paris-Dakar race, who was also one of the organizers ofÊthe Paris-Moscow-Beijing Rally in 1992. This was a 27-day raid event which covered the 10,000 miles course. It was won by the Citroen of Pierre Lartigue and Michel Perin.