“This is just the very start of a relationship with Honda, nothing happens instantly in Formula One,'' said Jordan. “McLaren and Mercedes have been together six to eight years, we've been together two races now. We've scored points in each race and two cars finishing, its a good start. One thing that we learnt last year was that we put reliability first as the key, vital ingredient. Then you can find the pace as you go forward. What I think is impossible to do is the reverse, start with a fast car and then try and make it reliable. Once it's not reliable you lose the momentum, you lose the confidence inside the team and it's an uphill battle. We learnt that very big lesson last year, we're not going to make that mistake again.”

Many see the one battle that the Jordan team has to win in 2001 is to be the top Honda runner, Eddie agrees with this but adds that he feels if BAR do well his team will improve as a result.

"It's in my interest to make sure that Jordan is stronger if possible than BAR.” He explained. “And there is an argument, that I happen to hold, that it's in my interest to make sure that BAR are strong and beating other people. Hopefully if we are able to beat BAR, they are taking points from other people. What I need is two strong teams, BAR and Jordan, to develop the engine as quickly as possible. They are more our friends than our enemies at the moment. There are other people that we want to beat before BAR.''