Shortly before Formula 1 headed into its month-long summer break, Eddie Jordan spared us 20 minutes of his time. The team owner turned BBC television pundit shares his feelings on the title battle, team orders, Jarno Trulli’s power steering, exhaust-blown diffusers and more, exclusively with GPUpdate.net.
We’ve had four different winners from the last five races. It’s great from our point of view, but are Vettel’s challengers not just taking points off each other?
Well that’s exactly right. We can recall what Alonso said in his interview at the Nürburgring; he said, for a change, that he now needs McLaren taking lots of points away from Red Bull. Will that happen?
If anything, I think it’s more of an advantage to Vettel than it is to Alonso, because he has the points and I don’t think there’s a person on this planet who would not want to be in Vettel’s situation: he’s got an extremely fast car and a brilliant team which is well managed and well funded. I think he knows mentally that he can handle it and, anyway, his team-mate is too far behind to really be a serious threat.
There will be opportunities for Mark, like at the Nürburgring when he was very quick. But can I see people passing in the championship? With great difficulty.
If Mark Webber won all remaining races with Vettel second (or even third), Vettel would still be World Champion. But how much more confident do you think Mark is after beating his team-mate in Germany?
I think Mark really needs to get a new contract under his belt. He needs to finalise that. He’s a perfect team member and doesn’t do things behind people’s backs. With Mark you always know what you’re getting. I think he’s a magic guy and, for me, he’s become such an outstanding driver.
He had a chance for his championship last year – will he ever get the same chance? It’s hard to say. But, then again, he did beat Vettel in Germany.
If in Christian Horner’s shoes, would you be allowing your drivers to race, bearing in mind the championship gap?
I’d certainly be doing what he did at Silverstone. What happened in Turkey last year is unacceptable and from a team point of view he has to win the Constructors’ Championship. He doesn’t need anybody having a run at him at this stage. He wants a nice quiet end to the season and he doesn’t want to have to develop all the way to the end because he can then develop next year’s car.
If I was Christian Horner I’d be saying, ‘Alright guys. We’re going to have a shut-off date at Monza. It should be technically impossible to for anybody to beat Vettel after that and, if that’s the case, we’ll help Mark win a couple of races to be sure that you’re in second place.’ That’s how I would go about it.
This is a very fair team, they play by the book and Silverstone was absolutely something that I agree with. If it had been roles reversed, with Mark ahead of Sebastian, I’m quite certain – I’m really quite certain – that Horner would have called the same ‘stay where you are guys’ call. It’s not a matter of who is in front of who.
Why are McLaren and Ferrari in this position of coming from behind?
They both came out of the box so slowly this year. They have to fight tooth and nail just to keep up with Red Bull.
Red Bull have the superior car and the other two, having had to compete all the way up to Abu Dhabi last year, lost the focus for this year’s cars.
They are catching up, albeit too late I think, but it’s still hugely exciting for the races.
We know that Horner did indeed make the call, when Webber was ahead, at the 2009 Turkish Grand Prix. Perhaps Silverstone 2011 was solely a case of over-reaction from onlookers…
You know, the media needs…(pause)…I like to be controversial sometimes - not for the sake of being controversial but, if something happens which I don’t think is right, then I will say so. That’s it. Perhaps sometimes teams don’t like me and sometimes they do. I am there to give an honest, fair opinion of what I think is happening, why it’s happening, why it’s not happening better or why it might be happening worse in a certain case. You have all those aspects and that’s why people like to tune in. All the media have their job to do and we respect them.
It’s not since 2008 that McLaren has genuinely been challenging for race wins since the start of the season. Do you feel frustrated that they are constantly playing a game of catch-up?
Well, there’s a couple of things. I admire them. They are a magic team, they have always been competitive and they’re second only to Ferrari for all-time race victories (173 to Ferrari’s 216). McLaren have always been good.
They’ve lost certainly people over the years. They lost Adrian Newey, they lost Ayrton Senna. But if you think back to Senna and Alain Prost, they won all races in a season with the exception of one; they’re certainly not doing that this year, despite having two world class drivers in Hamilton and Button.
But one of the key aspects as to why Red Bull are so strong is Adrian Newey – he’s just so, so good. McLaren look sleek, they are well financed and I’m sure Martin (Whitmarsh, Team Principal) has a lot of very good people around him; but to beat Red Bull he might have to have more - that’s the big issue, as far as I’m concerned.
You mentioned earlier how Fernando Alonso says he needs McLaren to help him win the championship. But should Ferrari be doing more to ensure Felipe Massa has a car with which he can assist his team-mate at the front of the field?
I thought it was kind of strange when we had Alonso talking about how he needed McLaren to come up and help him. He didn’t actually mention his team-mate which, odds up, would have been the first thing that he should have said. I wish Fernando would have been a little bit more gracious towards his team-mate and, instead of talking just about McLaren, he’s got to include his team-mate.
Remember, every racing driving is hugely selfish - it’s typical of a top racing driver. They think about themselves only and I think you would find it with a hugely talented athlete of any description. Having come across a couple of them myself, they can be gracious – and they are gracious – but overriding everything is ‘me’, how they can have the first choice, have the best engineers, designers, the whole lot. It’s just the nature of the beast, don’t think anything bad of it. It’s facts of life.
Further down the field we have seen some possible indications for next year. At Lotus, Karun Chandhok drove a single race in Germany, despite Team Principal Tony Fernandes saying that Jarno Trulli should soon be signed for 2012; do you feel that is a warning to Jarno?
Who knows? It’s a bizarre situation – equally as bizarre as the title of the team…having two teams with ‘Lotus’ in their name is one of the craziest situations that I can recall in a long time and they should get that sorted for next time.
You’re walking along and saying, ‘See you at Lotus!’ and then you’re thinking, ‘which one?!’ So my first message to those two teams is to sort out any dramas and get on with it, because it’s not helping anybody.
With regards to Chandhok…a nice guy and in my personal opinion, as an elder statesman, he has a great ability to be unbelievably talented on television and radio.
Do I necessarily see the talents to get him up to be World Champion? Well, time will tell – you just never, ever know what will happen. There can be some great stories but, at the moment, there just aren’t enough drives for him.
Do I think he’ll be in that race team next year? I don’t. I do, nevertheless, believe he’ll be in the team instead of Kovalainen for India this year – that’s my gut feeling. I can’t see how they would put him in for Germany and then miss out on having the Indian driver in the first Indian race – that makes absolute clear sense to me.
I think Jarno has been asked to take a break for one race and so has Heikki. I think Lotus will retain both of their current drivers for next year.
Before Hungary, we saw your former driver Trulli complaining for several weeks about his power steering. Can you remember a similar situation at Jordan for what seems like such a minor issue?
Well, very simple. What you do is say, ‘Okay guys, swap your cars. Give him your car.’ And do you know what? It seems to get rid of the problems. Oh my God…just get on with it. The problem is that Jarno, who is renowned for his qualifying speed, doesn’t seem to have it in him as much as he did.
The last weeks of the first half of F1 2011 were almost overshadowed by the engine mapping and diffuser row. We had a mid-season change which continued to evolve and was eventually completely reverted. Did that scenario make the sport look a little bit silly?
100 percent. I’m very pleased it’s gone away. But we’ve got to understand that every engineer in every team is trying to take advantage of the rules – that’s the nature of the beast. However, the whole exhaust-blowing situation was legal at the beginning of the season and then we had rule changes during the season. The Concorde Agreement has its specific quotes as to how we interpret this and that, but there are some supplementary regulations that we - the people in the media - don’t see.
But I did mention to this to (Ferrari Team Principal) Stefano Domenicali: why on earth, after what they did at Silverstone, would he agree to go back to a system which clearly was not to his advantage? I never really got an adequate answer.
A number of fans have been asking: Can we exclusively report that you are finally joining Twitter?
I’ve had this before! I’m a non-Twitter man. I’m a Rock ‘N’ Roll man.
Eddie Jordan was talking to GPUpdate.net’s Gregory Haines during a PUMA Motorsport phone-in
Twitter: @GregoryHainesF1
Series
Formula 1
Personalities
Eddie Jordan
Other
Get your official Formula 1 tickets at Sportstadium.com
| Eddie Jordan | |||
|---|---|---|---|
 |  |  |  |
| More Eddie Jordan photos | |||
English
Nederlands
Español
Italiano
