Ford wait in wings for Jordan

Declan Colley reports on the reinvention of a major player in Grand Prix

FORD is almost certain to come to the rescue of the Jordan Grand Prix team when, as expected, Honda pull the plug on their association with the Irish outfit.

An announcement of the new tie-up is expected at the Hungarian Grand Prix in two weeks, but the deal has come as a surprise to many F1 insiders as it will put the Blue Oval in direct competition with its subsidiary Jaguar, which already runs its own Grand Prix team.

Nevertheless, the American giant multinational is understood to feel that a partnership with Jordan will give it a chance to achieve maximum publicity for the Ford brand in key markets at a minimum cost to the company.

The cost factor is key to the plan, especially given the massive expense involved in the Jaguar effort, which thus far has been a spectacular failure despite the huge investment.

The thinking is that for the relatively small cost of a customer deal with another subsidiary Cosworth, who already build Jaguar’s engines Ford would maximise a major marketing benefit, on a par with that enjoyed by BMW in association with Williams.

It has been suspected for some time now Honda will terminate its current three year deal with Jordan at the end of this season, a year ahead of schedule, and concentrate on working with its other Grand Prix partner, British American Racing.

Cosworth has been supplying customer engines to the troubled Arrows team this year and had to threaten to stop that supply at the recent British Grand Prix when stage payments from the Leafield outfit had not been forthcoming.

A move to Jordan, would not cause them too much heartache. The return of Ford is unlikely to impact on the future of Jaguar Racing in the short term.

Ford is understood to feel that F1 is now big enough to support two brands owned by the same company especially as the arrival of mass manufacturing companies like Renault and Toyota has changed the brand positioning of F1.

There have, however, been distinct signs of disquiet among Ford’s senior executives about the continuing lack of performance at Jaguar.

According to Ford’s chief financial officer, Allan Gilmore, there are increasingly strong opinions within the company about what to do with the Milton Keynes-based team.

“This is a high visibility sport related to automotive parts,” he said. “The other view is that, no, we don’t need to be doing this. It is interesting and exciting, but it is terribly expensive.

Ford’s chief operating officer, has spoken on several occasions of his support for Jaguar’s F1 involvement, but even he recently admitted that the team’s form was not nearly good enough.

“It is fair to say that F1 is not doing for Jaguar’s image what we had hoped.”

On the sponsorship front, an involvement by Ford in Jordan would almost certainly mean the end of the team’s association with Benson and Hedges as the car manufacturer has a no tobacco policy.

However, the team could still remain in their current yellow livery in deference to Deutsche Post, the parent company of current title sponsors, DHL. The tie-up between Jordan and Ford also has a commercial element, as Ford does a huge amount of business with DHL, to whom they supply substantial amounts of vans, trucks and lorries for their logistics business.

Ford’s European management are in the final stages of committing to a three year deal with Jordan thoughout this week.

Ford’s European President Martin Leach is thought to be leading the programme and is very anxious to get the company back into the mainstream of Grand Prix racing.

Being able to do so at a fraction of the cost involved in the Jaguar debacle, makes the deal all the more attractive, although it will increase the pressure on Jaguar’s F1 boss, Niki Lauda.

The three-time world champion yesterday admitted that he could understand the feeling of disappointment within Ford at the lack of performance from the Jaguar team.

“When you don’t perform, then of course no one is happy, but I can explain the reasons for what is happening at the moment and all we can do is work towards solving the problems.

“I have been able to express this to Ford executives and we know what the problem is, I have not been told anything will be different from my point of view,” Lauda said.