No Excuses for Current Form, Says Jordan

Jordan are not struggling with a reliability problem despite failing to score points in their last four races, team boss Eddie Jordan said on Tuesday.

"There are no excuses for our recent poor performance," he said ahead of Sunday's French Grand Prix which Jordan won in 1999. We are extremely frustrated with the course of events over the past few races. Having said this, it would be easy to build up a false picture and it is important to stand back and look at all the facts.

"I think some people will wrongly jump to the conclusion that we have an unreliable car and are suffering similar problems to last year. This would be inaccurate for a variety of reasons," he told Jordan's website.

He did not elaborate on the reasons. Jordan started the season strongly after a poor 2000 saw them slump to sixth overall. They scored in the first five races of 2001 while Honda-powered rivals British American Racing (BAR) had just two scoring finishes over the same period. But after nine races, Jordan are fifth overall and just one point ahead of BAR.

At the European Grand Prix at the Nurburgring last Sunday, both the yellow cars failed to finish. Germany's Heinz-Harald Frentzen, who missed the previous Canadian race because he felt unwell after two heavy crashes, had a sudden failure with his traction control that caused him to spin while in eighth place.

Italian Jarno Trulli, who has qualified consistently well this season, ran sixth for much of the race before suffering a gearbox problem.

"It is clear that we are not realising our potential," Jordan said immediately after the race. "The problems seem to be different at each race which is hugely frustrating and means we have to have ongoing analysis to establish the causes for each retirement."

Jordan joint managing director Trevor Foster said that, despite Sauber being mathematically fourth overall, qualifying showed that Jordan were the fourth strongest.

"But we do need to work on our race performance and stop the niggling problems which have made us suffer so much recently," he said.