Five down, 11 to go for Jordan

Five Down...
By Phil Giles
May 6 2003

Right then. We're five races into the season so it's about time for our first comparison chart to see how well the Jordan team and drivers are actually doing in this years World Championship.

The first things to note are the Friday and Saturday qualifying sessions.  In all but one session, Giancarlo has managed to out qualify his team mate.  This is only to be expected given Giancarlo's experience over Ralph in his rookie season.  However perhaps as an indication of the car, the largest gap between the two drivers is only 8 places.  The average gap between them is just four places on the grid.  The cars highest grid position was 8th in the Brazilian Grand Prix, however Fisi averages 13th and Ralph's average over both sessions is 17th.

Despite a win in the Brazilian Grand Prix, the EJ13 has only finished 3 times out of the 10 starts it has made.  So the car is still not the most reliable of the cars out there.  Giancarlo has finished once albeit on the top step of the podium and Ralph has got the car home on two occasions.

So "Could do better" needs to be marked on the Jordan score card at the moment.  There are 2/3rds of the season left so there is plenty of time for improvement and as Giancarlo says, he's looking forward to racing at Austria, Monaco and Canada. Perhaps there is more time available for the team to pick up their averages and hit rows 4 and 5 on a more regular basis.

Come on guys, we know you can do it.

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