Jordan start slowly in Hungary

Work to do
By Phil Giles
August 23 2003

Jordan started their Hungarian Grand Prix qualifying campaign with both cars line astern in 16th and 17th positions, Giancarlo in front of team mate Ralph Firman.

Giancarlo's test session ended early with an engine failure that left him on the sidelines.  After the team worked hard to change the engine, however Giancarlo again was left high and dry after a second failure. The team were unable to restore the car for the qualifying session and subsequently Giancarlo had to qualify in the T Car.

Again, temperatures at the circuit affected the tyres and the EJ13's aerodynamics.  Giancarlo said afterwards that he was hoping for a better day today "I had lots of problems this morning and as a result we didn’t have the opportunity to run my race car to try out and improve the set-up.  I was using the t-car and the circuit was difficult during qualifying as it was very hot.  I’m hoping for a better day tomorrow."

Gary Anderson said "Giancarlo was only able to do a few laps in the private testing session as he had two engine failures, however Ralph and Zsolt had a reasonable session and got through the programme which included some set-up and tyre evaluation."

"In free practice Giancarlo had to use the spare car as there wasn't enough time to carry out the second engine change, so we had a bit of work just getting up to speed and doing some set-up work.  In qualifying Giancarlo lost a bit of time in the first sector compared to this morning - the track was very hot and these slippy conditions offer us very little grip."

Ralph's early comments are becoming fairly similar.  “Once again, it’s my first time at this track. We had a good morning session but in qualifying I took it a little bit cautiously in the middle sector as the circuit has some quite blind and difficult corners. All in all the car’s a bit more predictable than at other races but obviously we’re not quick enough. I’m looking forward to tomorrow.”

The Hungarian Grand Prix is usually a bit of a slow race with most teams suffering at the hands of high temperatures and a very dusty track.  Hopefully the track will have been cleaned up for the final qualifying session later today and the EJ13 can take another second off its current lap time of 1:24.725