New firm

FOR SIX years, as he wrestled with obscurity in the Far East, he had thought long and hard about this moment. So, he wasn’t going to mess it up, not his first taste of life in the hyper-reality of Formula 1.

Not once did he blink as the snappers captured digital image after digital image, not once did he stutter or his language halt as he delightfully expressed his ambitions for the forthcoming season. Afterwards Eddie Jordan asked one of his associates, “he did alright, didn’t he?”. How you handle the press, the pose you adopt for photographers, these things are important this world. These are the things that sell.

There was no need for Jordan to worry. Ralph Firman did fine. In fact, if Firman handles his car with the same steady hand he controlled his first press gig as a Jordan driver, he may succeed in convincing his new boss that the past two seasons, where disappointment has been followed by turmoil followed by disappointment, was nothing more than a blip in Jordan’s dream to become a force inside Bernie Eccelestone’s televisual bubble.