The Jordan team had a disappointing day at the European Grand Prix in Nurburgring today with a pair of DNFs. Jarno Trulli was forced to retire with clutch failure while team-mate Heinz-Harald Frentzen spun out of the race. Trulli remained upbeat despite his fourth successive failure to finish, insisting that the team just needs a little luck to turn around their reliability problems. "I've shown that I can perform in qualifying and in the race and I am running in the points," said Trulli.
"I just haven't had any real luck, but I'm not frustrated because I have shown what I can do."
Trulli insisted that he did well to drive his struggling Honda-powered car into the top six, despite suffering from clutch failure from the outset. "I had a clutch problem from the start of the race but the car was feeling very good and I was as quick as Mika Hakkinen, but couldn't overtake him and then the clutch gave up. I was keeping pace with him even though I had the problem."
Meanwhile, Frentzen admitted that his race-ending spin caught him by surprise. "My traction control stopped working - it came out of the blue and spun me around.
"The car was alright at the start and we tried to be as quick as possible, although we had problems with the rear tyres, but in the end we couldn't go any further," he said.
Jordan have kept their fifth position in the constructors' championship with 13 points despite today's poor showing, lying just two behind the Sauber team and one ahead of fellow Honda-engined British American Racing.
Filed by Greg McKevitt
