Jordan seek home comforts

JORDAN are hoping to rediscover their way at this weekend’s British Grand Prix at Silverstone, just a stone’s throw from their factory.

Ralph Firman’s eighth place in Spain six races ago is the only point they have scored since Giancarlo Fisichella unexpectedly triumphed in the wet in the third grand prix of the season in Brazil. Fisichella has left no-one in any doubt that he has been unhappy with the performance of the car, repeatedly admitting he wants a more competitive drive in 2004 while rookie Firman is still finding his Formula One feet.

The Ford-powered team’s lack of resources and limited testing is beginning to show with Fisichella and Firman qualifying in a lowly 17th and 18th places respectively at the last race in France.

Italian Fisichella failed to finish for the fourth time since his Sao Paulo success while Englishman Firman eventually came home 15th at Magny-Cours but the team are hopeful a return to their Silverstone base will herald a change in fortunes.

“Silverstone is a fairly tough circuit which is challenging in every respect. However, we’ve had a couple of tests here so I believe we’ve got a reasonable base line to start from this weekend,” Jordan’s director of race and test engineering Gary Anderson said. “Over the last couple of races we seem to have lost our way a little bit but hopefully we’ve got ourselves back together again and will improve over the weekend.

“I believe Bridgestone will be advantageous here, which may give us a better opportunity and also the changeable weather forecast might work in our favour. On the basis of the testing we’ve done at Silverstone, the car hasn’t been too bad. It seems to handle well, we have a few small updates and we have a good idea of which direction we should be going with set-up. With regards to our performance, it’s important to look at the big picture.

“With hindsight maybe we did the wrong thing at the wrong time and instead of moving forwards to sixth or seventh we went backwards. But you have to keep looking for new things. You can’t just sit back and accept what you’ve got as there are constant developments and improvements to find. Sometimes changes work, sometimes they don’t but you have to take that risk - if you don’t try something different, you’re not looking and you may not find that crucial one or two extra 10ths of a second.

“We will go out at Silverstone with a reasonably stable set-up package and work from there. It would be good to get a points result here as it’s great to be racing at home.”

Williams’ bid to wrestle Formula One supremacy from Ferrari was given a £30million (42m) boost yesterday after they landed a major sponsorship deal with Budweiser.

The team have agreed a five- and-a-half-year deal with the US brewing giant, who first approached their Italian rivals.