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The Jordan 197 was strong right out of the box and was good enough to win on the right weekend if everyone did a good job. At the initial Jerez test the car wasn't quite ready, so Ralf Schumacher, who was a rookie for 1997, got some mileage in the '96 car.
Then he got in the 197 and, after the shakedown laps, on his first proper run he found it was a massive improvement in terms of performance and driveability. When he came in he had a huge smile on his face.
The 1997 season was our third with Peugeot engines, and during the previous two years we had built up a good relationship with them. So, I was able to allocate much more of my time to the Jordan 197 than the '95 and '96 cars. There's only so much time, and there were other priorities for those two years as building a relationship with a new engine supplier is never easy.
