Villeneuve Raises BAR to Jordan's Level

Former world champion Jacques Villeneuve matched his best result of the season in Sunday's French Grand Prix and put his BAR team within two points of the Formula One rivals they most want to beat.

The Canadian's fourth place left the BAR team with nine points from nine races, just two adrift of the Jordan team.

Villeneuve has scored all but one of his team's points, the other coming from Brazilian Ricardo Zonta who only managed to complete 16 laps at Magny-Cours.

Jordan announced on Thursday that they would use works Honda engines next season instead of their current Mugen-Honda ones, a coup by team boss Eddie Jordan that ended BAR's monopoly of the power units.

But on Sunday, Villeneuve saw off both the Jordans of Italian Jarno Trulli, who came sixth, and last year's winner Heinz-Harald Frentzen who finished seventh.

Villeneuve had started seventh but was up to fifth place by the first corner. "The start was so good that I even surprised myself," the Canadian said.

"This has been the most fantastic teamwork I've seen since the start of British American Racing," said team managing director Craig Pollock, despite Zonta's failure to finish again.

The Brazilian, who has had plenty of crashes in his brief Formula One career, was the first retirement of the race when he ploughed straight ahead through a gravel trap and into the tyre barriers on lap 17.

Jordan conceded that his team, third in the constructors' standings last year but currently fifth behind Williams and Benetton in a title race involving only Ferrari and McLaren, have a fight ahead.

"Our performance today shows that it is clearer than ever that we really have a fight this season to hold on to third place," he said.

"We need to push harder to increase our competitiveness. We will run a new aerodynamic package and have a revised engine in Austria, so this should help take us in the right direction," he added.