By Phil Giles
May 8 2004

Jordan had a trouble free day in free practice for the Spanish Grand Prix yesterday with third driver Timo Glock beating both race drivers on the timesheets.

Timo enjoyed his day but admitted that the car was running light at the end of the day.  "It was a good day" he said.  "In the first session I went a bit slower in the beginning because in Imola I spun off after 14 laps or so - I said to myself, here at this next Grand Prix practice I would go a little bit easy and do a good job for the team. So it went well and step by step we found a better set-up. We have a good tyre for the race. During second practice it started to rain lightly and for me it was difficult to know how fast to go in these conditions. At the end my timed lap was really good. I have no experience of driving F1 with low fuel so my last run was a bit conservative. I hope to find out more about that, maybe when we are testing. It was a good day and my engineer and the mechanics did a good job."

The aerodynamic changes that were tested in Vairano appeared on the car and Nick seemed to think that there was definite improvement.  "I’m quite happy with free practice today." said Nick. "The changes on the car that we have here - mainly on the aerodynamic side - seem to have helped, judging by our gaps to the other cars. But I’m still sure that we can improve the car for tomorrow. Again, I had no technical problems and I managed to do a long run at the end. We are still not where we want to be but I think we have made a good step forward and I’m really quite confident for tomorrow."

Giorgio however was not impressed with his performance being over a second behind the time set by Timo.  "I’m not really happy with how my sessions went today. It’s my first time here in Formula One and I need to learn a little bit more about how to find the limits. I think we can learn something from what we did today and we can improve tomorrow for sure. I have to improve too. We were close to where we should have been today but not quite there."

James Robinson said: "It was a positive day for Jordan Ford, especially given that we haven’t been to Barcelona testing with our 2004 car, as many teams have. We have made improvements to the car for this Grand Prix and so far they are showing in lap time and we are closing the gap to the cars ahead of us. We had a problem-free day with all three cars, which is always good and means we could get through the homework. Although we have not tested the EJ14 here, we have been well-supported by Bridgestone, who worked closely with us on our tyre choice."

FREE PRACTICE 1
Timo Glock         (EJ14/01)     18th     1:18.655     23 laps
Nick Heidfeld      (EJ14/03)     21st     1:19.198     16 laps
Giorgio Pantano   (EJ14/02)     22nd    1:19.925     14 laps

FREE PRACTICE 2
Timo Glock         (EJ14/01)     15th     1:17.608     31 laps
Nick Heidfeld      (EJ14/03)     20th     1:18.117     23 laps
Giorgio Pantano   (EJ14/02)     21st     1:18.726     21 laps