04/07/2004
NEWS STORY
Nick Heidfeld and Giorgio Pantano finished the French Grand Prix 16th and 17th in a race which saw total reliability from ninety per cent of the grid. Jordan Ford executed its strategy with minor pit lane setbacks for both drivers; Pantano received a drive-through penalty for exceeding the pit lane speed limit and Heidfeld took the pit crew by surprise, coming in without warning a lap before his scheduled second stop.
Nick Heidfeld: It was not a good race for us today but it's easier to handle as there was no chance for points anyway with most of the cars finishing. Unfortunately I had a poorer start than my teammate again and I have tried to analyse that over the last weeks. I overtook him after the first pit stop and then later there was a misunderstanding with my engineer so I went through the pit lane once too often and I was behind Giorgio again then passed him again. Overall the balance of the car has been better at most other races so far. With new tyres the rears were good for a few laps and then dropped off and I had a lot of graining on the front. Added to that there was a lot of lapping and blue flags. A difficult race.
Giorgio Pantano: It was good that we finished the race as it's quite a long time since I did that. I had a really good start then I felt some problems with the car especially with braking. Finishing reliably is the positive thing to take from here and then let's get going to the next race.
James Robinson: This has been a weekend we would like to pass over and move on from. In terms of reliability it was clearly good to get two cars to the end, but performance-wise, from where we started on the grid we couldn't make much impression and with only two cars dropping out we couldn't move forward. We're looking ahead to Silverstone, our home race, where we will be in a few days' time and hopefully we will get a better result there.