JACKIE STEWART set his sights on a world championship for the new millennium yesterday when the wraps came off the first of the new Stewart-Ford Formula One challengers at a London reception. More than a thousand members of the media attended, a dramatic testimony to the 57-year-old Scot's pulling power 23 years after his own retirement from the cockpit.
The new Alan Jenkins-designed Stewart SF-1 chassis is the first grand prix car to be entirely designed by computer. "There is not one conventional drawing board at our Milton Keynes headquarters," said the retired triple world champion.
Yet it is the commercial possibilities of Stewart's image, rather that the technical nitty gritty which has attracted a raft of sponsors who have already pitched in with £15 million of backing for the 1997 season. This, combined with a five-year deal for works Ford engines and all associated technical back-up, means that F1's most spectacular debutant of recent years has successfully secured its operational budget three months ahead of its race debut in Melbourne on March 9th next.
The new Stewart-Ford operation, masterminded by Jackie and his 31-year-old son Paul, will field two cars driven by Denmark's Jan Magnussen and Brazil's Rubens Barrichello in next year's world championship. Stewart admitted that his team was only 48 hours away from getting world champion Damon Hill's signature on a contract for 1997, but then the Englishman changed his mind.
"I couldn't say we were disappointed," he said, "because we expected him to go to Jordan. I found it surprising that he eventually went to TWR Arrows. Yet perhaps having the pressure of the reigning world champion in our team would have given us too much to cope with."
Stewart Snr displayed characteristic Scottish reticence when attempting to assess his new car's future performance potential.
"A reputation is built on the past," he said, "but success is built on the present and the future. I have always needed to deliver in whatever task I've undertaken, and I will be trying very hard to do just that.
"We have got to deliver for the Stewart-Ford team, in our time and at our own pace. I never promised a win in a grand prix, or a championship, when I was a driver. I wanted to deliver the best I could. If we were good enough, then we would win, if we were really good enough we would win a championship. That's what we have to do again, but in a much more complicated environment.
"I suppose you could say that winning three world championships at the wheel sometimes seemed easy compared with the challenge of building our own team. It has been a greater challenge, more complicated and more difficult, than just being a driver."
Stewart also paid tribute to the efforts of his son Paul who has been responsible for building the entire team infrastructure in conjunction with Alan Jenkins, their technical director.
"It has been particularly nice to undertake this programme with my own flesh and blood" said Jackie. "I really don't think I would have done it without Paul, and I don't think I could have done it. And to have Mark, my younger son who has a video production company, making a video of the team which will go out as a TV special, it has been a real family affair."
Stewart's alliance with Ford represents the continuation of a 32-year association with the motor manufacturer which began even before his Formula One debut in 1965.
"This partnership shows that Ford has become recommitted to Fl," said Martin Whitaker, Ford's European motorsport director. "Since Michael Schumacher's 1994 world championship victory in the Benetton-Ford - often called the best kept secret in motor racing - I think the company had lost some of the impetus behind its Fl involvement. We have had two years in the wilderness and now we have the chance with Stewart to seriously get back into it."
