2nd November - Heinz-Harald says the team was right to push to the limit.

In 2000 Jordan obviously tried to build a car that was faster than their 1999 race winner. Without the opportunity to have a major engine upgrade they knew they might have to sacrifice some reliability to gain the necessary technical and aerodynamic improvements. As it turned out the EJ10 was neither as or as reliable fast as they hoped and the team slipped from an excellent 3rd in the constructors championship to a dismal 6th, their lowest finish since 1995.

In spite of this Heinz-Harald feels they did the right thing and that they had to take risks. “We proved the potential in 1999, but there was room for improvement,” he said in Autosport magazine. “For example, our gearbox was some 20kg too heavy in 1999 and the new car was substantially lighter. The decision to push too far was correct.
“Many of the failures were not our fault but involved parts we did not build. It is tough to prevent that.”

Performance-wise, the German believes the EJ10’s main weakness was its aerodynamics, even though the team brought out a revised ‘B’ version of the car for the final races of the season.
“In 1999 we had a car which was excellent on certain tracks but not very impressive on others,” he said. “The goal was to build a car which was competitive on all sorts of circuits. We failed. On certain tracks we were even worse than in 1999.”

Despite technical director Mike Gascoyne leaving the team to head Benetton’s design department, Frentzen believes that Jordan will learn lessons from its season and come back stronger in 2001.
“With Honda we will grow immensely and I think that we can drive with the aim of victories again,” he said