Analysis: Jordan Grand Prix's on-track performances have been slowly declining since 1999, writes Justin Hynes.
Buoyed then by the underperformance of other teams and a healthy crop of sponsors whose cashflow enabled the team to invest heavily in development work, the team took third place in the Formula One constructors' championship behind the big two of Ferrari and McLaren, as well as securing third in the drivers' championship with German driver Heinz Harald Frentzen.
Ambitious plans were announced for further investment in R&D and expansion of most of the team's major departments, but the following season, 2000, Jordan slumped to sixth, hampered by a troublesome chassis and a heavy engine.
But in France that year, Eddie Jordan announced he had secured a works engine deal from manufacturer Honda, effectively meaning that development and supply, and crucially the cost of such, would be picked up by the Japanese, whereas before Jordan had been paying Honda's racing subsidiary a rumoured figure of £15 million per season for its powerful but heavy engines.
With the sport increasingly dominated by manufacturers - Mercedes, BMW, Renault, Ford were all present - the Honda deal appeared to secure Jordan's competitive future. But the results didn't come (they finished fifth in 2001 and sixth last year), as Honda built its programme slowly via Jordan, and similarly supplied BAR, and Jordan struggled with chassis design following the departure of technical director Mike Gascoyne and a number of key staff to the revitalised Renault team. And when crunch time came for the Japanese company, it was Jordan's contract which was severed, two years into a three-year deal. The loss of Honda, coupled with staff defections and, almost simultaneously, the effect the events of September 11th had on sponsorship spend within F1, plunged Jordan into deep trouble.
Between 1999 and 2001, Jordan had relied on solid sponsorship investment, chiefly through tobacco firm Benson & Hedges and latterly through logistics giant DHL/Deutsche Post but also including companies as diverse as MasterCard, Damovo, Esat Digifone, Imation and others. At the close of 2002, however, DHL withdrew from the sport, leaving a $23 million (€19.5 million) hole in Jordan's budget.
B&H, meanwhile, had scaled down its involvement, though this year the company returned to prominence on the car for a figure believed to be about $12 million, a far cry from the $25 million Jordan was believed to be charging the companies in the days of its greatest success.
Eddie Jordan, cash-strapped, sponsor-light and massively damaged by the loss of his court case against Vodafone, which resulted in Jordan being excoriated by the presiding judge as an "unsatisfactory witness", has reverted to base principles, buying in year-old Jaguar Racing engines from parent company Ford, seeking "pay" drivers, who bring personal sponsorship to be used by the team and battening down the hatches of an already storm-tossed vessel. This year it looks like Jordan in either eighth or ninth position in the 10-team championship.
But such is the case across the lower end of the Formula One paddock.
Minardi had to be bailed out to the tune of £4 million earlier in the year by F1 surpremo Bernie Ecclestone and, still labouring under debts of $30 million, team owner Paul Stoddart has been forced to sell off the remaining parts of his core European Aviation business to fund his floundering team. Even mighty Ford, parent company of Jaguar Racing, is seeking drivers who will pay for the privilege of driving for the team, a privilege that comes with a £5 million price tag.
As McLaren-Mercedes boss Ron Dennis once said of the sport's reliance of sponsorship: "We are the first in and the last out of a recession." Jordan, is, unfortunately, in the midst of that arc.
