FORMULA ONE: Jordan looks set to continue to run Honda engines in 2003 after plans to secure a deal for works Ford engines stalled late on  uesday night.

Yesterday Ford vice-president Richard Parry-Jones issued a statement which appeared to deny Jordan a supply of Cosworth-built, Ford-badged engines.

"There has been a great deal of media speculation in the past few days concerning the supply of Cosworth engines to F1 teams next year," he said. "As an engine supplier, Cosworth Racing is in discussion with teams about the possible supply of engines for next season. This is perfectly normal practice and in the event of any agreement, an official statement would be made through Cosworth Racing at the appropriate time."

The statement appears to suggest that even in the event of Jordan obtaining a supply of Cosworth engines, they would not be Ford-badged and would be delivered on a customer basis in the manner that the troubled Arrows team currently use the powerplants of Ford-owned engine companies. This looks like scuppering Eddie Jordan's plans to use Cosworth next year.

Current Jordan supplier Honda are coming to the close of the second year of a "locked-in" three-year section of a five-year deal and are believed to be none too keen to break their association with Jordan if any resulting penalty payments were used by Jordan to obtain customer Cosworth units.

Jordan and Honda are thus likely to see out the remainder of the locked-in part of the deal and, at the close of the 2003 season, wave each other goodbye.

That would appear to leave Jordan in a position whereby it has merely put off the inevitable engine crisis for 12 months. Current speculation, however, suggests that while Jordan have lost their Ford deal for 2003, the prospect of works Ford engines being used in 2004 is still very much alive.

Jackie Stewart, who sold his Stewart Racing team to Ford in 1999 and still holds a consultancy role at Ford and the troubled Jaguar Racing team which sprang from his team, has hinted that the Jordan-Ford association is still on.

"There's every reason to believe there will be an official supplier relationship with Jordan," said the three-time world champion, who added that Ford's relationship with its own Jaguar team was in a fragile state.

"Jaguar is going through a very rough time when the economy isn't going well. Ford has to ask itself: Is the baby too expensive to feed? It would be a big decision not to continue. F1 is the one motor sport with global marketing."

It is unlikely that Ford will fold Jaguar Racing in favour of Jordan, despite reported running costs of $158 million per year. But the opportunity for Ford to drop its less-than-successful brand and boost the image of the "blue oval" by running Ford-badged engines at the more stable Jordan team appears to be a win-win situation for the manufacturing giant.

Success via Jordan would boost Ford's image and Cosworth engines used by both Jordan and Jaguar would benefit Jaguar, whose slow pace of development could be masked with any Jordan success.

The continuation of a Honda deal with Jordan next year could safeguard the seat of Takuma Sato at the Irish team. Sato would almost certainly have been expelled if the Honda contract had been broken and rumours suggested Heinz-Harald Frentzen would return to the Jordan fold, heavily backed by Jordan's sponsors Deutsche Post and Puma.

The cessation of Frentzen's term at Arrows, almost certainly because the troubled British team could not afford him, seemed to point in the direction of an imminent announcement, but Frentzen's future now looks uncertain.