F1 Must Offer Real Races, Says Jordan

Formula One and Ferrari must offer real racing or risk losing fans to other sports offering more drama and excitement, says team chief Eddie Jordan.

The Irish entrepreneur was scathing of Ferrari and World Champion Michael Schumacher's behaviour in a U.S. Grand Prix dominated by the Italian team with another one-two finish on Sunday.

"After Austria, this isn't very clever is it?," said Jordan of Schumacher's slowing down at the line to allow Brazilian teammate Rubens Barrichello to catch and beat him in front of a crowd expecting the winner to come hurtling across the finish.

"It is a very, very financially hostile market at the moment and there were other sports on TV today, one where golf made a huge impact on everyone throughout the globe by hard fighting," said the Irish entrepreneur.

"People want to see real competition fought to the last ounce. That is what happened in golf, I understand it happened in the superbike race, and people are not going to turn on a Formula One race when they know the end is going to be decided other than by true racing.

"If Ferrari have that advantage like they had, people at least deserve to see a race."

Formula One, warned by the sport's supremo Bernie Ecclestone that it was not putting on a good show, was up against golf's Ryder Cup tournament and the world superbike showdown at the weekend.

Confusion Theory

The result may have been unintentional, with confusion rather than conspiracy the order of the day, and Schumacher said that he had wanted the two Ferraris to cross the line side by side.

But the finish echoed May's contrived Austrian Grand Prix, a race that sparked uproar around the world before Schumacher's fifth title led to a steady falling off in the television ratings. Jordan wondered how Schumacher could have imagined that two drivers might share a win in the modern era.

"How can you have a dead heat? In modern technology when one thousandth of a second is possible, dead heats are gone out with Roy Rogers, The Lone Ranger, the War of the Roses and all that stuff. There is no such thing as dead heats in anything any more, timing is too accurate with beams and lasers and stuff. Michael isn't that good yet," he said.

Williams technical director Patrick Head suggested that Fiat-owned Ferrari had got their priorities wrong.

"I think it reflects the fact that the senior people at Ferrari think that Ferrari is more important than motor racing and they think that finishing races that way reflects better on Ferrari," he said. "But they don't seem to have an opinion of what it does for motor racing."

Simple Mistake

Minardi boss Paul Stoddart believed Schumacher had made a mistake but said Ferrari had still done the sport no favours at a time when America was being eagerly courted.

"It's not good for the sport, I'll agree with that. You'd have to ask Ferrari what the reasons are but I think most people will probably say they wish it hadn't happened."

Ferrari, the constructors' World Champions for four years in a row now, also stood accused of trivialising the sport by playing games at the end. But sporting director Jean Todt rejected the criticism and delighted in his team's achievements.

"There were no team orders. The only thing that was said was that after the second pitstop there would be no more fight," he said.

"It would be very presumptuous and not humble at all to say that we are controlling everything. We are not controlling everything. We try to, we do our best but we don't want to fight against each other if it's not in the interests of the company.

"We are in a sport where we have commercial interests...Rubens is happy, Michael is happy, we are happy."