German GP Friday Jordan notes

The Benson and Hedges Jordan Mugen-Honda EJ10 gave a competitive performance in Germany in today's Free Practice. Frentzen produced an excellent performance in front of his home crowd to finish just behind Michael Schumacher. Jordan Grand Prix made an encouraging start to the German Grand Prix weekend when Heinz-Harald Frentzen set second fastest time during Friday's practice. Running the modified Jordan-Mugen Honda for the first time at a race meeting, Frentzen was just 0.043 sec. slower than the Ferrari of championship leader, Michael Schumacher. Jarno Trulli, after losing all of morning practice with a technical problem, recovered to set sixth fastest time.

Both drivers commented favourably on a new aerodynamics package which is working well on the high-speed track at Hockenheim. The first hour of practice was run in warm, sultry conditions while, for the first part of the second session, the track was very wet, but dried quickly after a heavy shower.

'I'm pretty happy with the performance today,' said Frentzen. 'Despite the changeable weather, the car was a step forward in both the wet and the dry conditions. We seem to be very competitive here and we have maintained the quality of the car on a high-speed track. We ran mainly with race fuel on board today and it will be interesting to see how the car goes when we run low fuel for qualifying tomorrow.'

Practice had barely started in the morning when Trulli's car stopped out in the circuit with a hydraulics problem caused by a seal having come out. Jarno had to wait until the end of the session before the car could be brought back to the Jordan garage for repairs.

'The mechanics had a lot of work to do,' said Trulli. 'They had to strip the rear of the car and take the gearbox off to fix the problem. But they managed to do that in time to get me back onto the track for part of the afternoon session. Unfortunately, the track was wet and it was very difficult to feel the car in those conditions. But, even so, I could tell that we have the potential to do very well. Despite the limited number of laps, we did enough to understand which direction to take on the set-up when practice begins again tomorrow. The new aerodynamic package feels very good.'

None of the leading teams reported any problems.