| 4th April- Heinz wants half a second a lap. |
|
Heinz-Harald Frentzen has called on his Jordan team to up the cars performance so they can close the gap on Ferrari, McLaren and Williams. Speaking after the Brazilian Grand Prix he said, "To make a step forward we will have to find another big performance improvement. Half a second may not sound like a lot, no more than one blink of an eye over a 75 second lap, but even that is no easy thing to find when you look at the competition we have to beat, especially when they are all trying to find the same thing!"
Despite the surprising speed of the Williams BMW package, Jordan should now be closing in on the front of the grid - The team should be aiming to be within half a second of pole time. During the weekend at Interlagos he was .8 second from the front and he expected to be closer. "I was hoping to mix it up with Ferrari, Williams and McLaren on the grid, but when it came to qualifying practice, I soon discovered there was no chance of that. I did four good qualifying runs, each of them a few hundredth's of a second quicker than the previous one. The car felt pretty good and with Jarno (Trulli) setting virtually the same time, I knew that whatever we did our Benson and Hedges Jordan Honda wasn't going to be able to bridge the half second gap that separated us from the top six runners."
A large part of the work to be done will have to come from the team's new engine supplier, Honda. Apart from not currently being as powerful as the BMW, Ferrari or Mercedes equivalents, there is some concern regarding reliability as Heinz lost a certain top 3 finish due to an engine misfire, "I was confident of taking third place, for even if it dried, which it nearly did, the intermediate tyres would get me to a podium finish. Unfortunately, the car didnīt. Needless to say, I was pretty disappointed, as it was yet another race where we certainly could not have done a better job than we did. That was at least one small consolation for myself and especially the B&H Jordan-Honda team who are working so hard for that extra half second a lap".
|
|
Get your own Free Home Page