33 replies to this topic

[webber]

yea but look at Suber thay have done nonthing so far as ferrair's B team

[Senna]

Quote

yea but look at Suber thay have done nonthing so far as ferrair's B team

Yep.  I thought Sauber would be much better than they are at the moment – especially as they have the current Ferrari engine and a gearbox designed in association with Ferrari.  They also have two good drivers.  I can’t explain their lack of pace…Having said that they have scored a point which ties them with Jaguar and puts them ahead of Toyota and Jordan etc in the Constructors’ Championship so they’re not regressing in terms of performance relative to 2003.  They’re just not progressing fast enough.  They should in theory be around the pace of BAR, it’s a shame they’re not.  Perhaps they’ll improve as the season progresses.

[webber]

yea sauber might get better as the season goes no but lets hope not. there should be right up there with the jags on the racing track. both teams drivers and evenly mached and thay run on about the same buget yer sauber just cant get that last jag on the track

[eddoyle]

The bottom line on why Jordan has not already sold the major shareholding the the team are as follows

one line summary-> its about money & loyalty dude

1) currently no serious manufacturer wants to buy a team, Nissan are probably closest to joining but they wont want to join and spend 4 years being lapped by Honda or Toyota. If they did want to buy believe me the terms of the sale at this juncture would destroy EJ personally.

2) Lets say he did sell, the first thing that would happen is that the new owners would bring in their own people to run the show amd start to make life rather unpleasant for the guys who have give EJ 14 years  incredible service, Jordan could not let these people down without arranging some kind of parachute for the team (and again the terms he woud get at this point would not make this possible)

3) The capital structure at jordan is still shaky. Yes Merrion Capital Partners did buy out Warburg Pincus (for 20% or so of what Warburg paid Jordan). MCP are medium term partners thus MCP & Jordan are waiting for the capital markets to recover and either IPO (not likely any time soon) or sell to a manufacturer when the gloabl economic climate or results on the track lifts the capital value of Jordan GP.


From a purely shareholder value perspective Joran is doing the 100% right thing by tieing himself to a team of the future which should move him back into the midfield.You can be assured this is exactly what MCP want him to do to give htem an exit strategy in 3-5 years.

QED