S1 E5: How Jordan nearly won the 1999 F1 world championship

Bring Back V10s - Classic F1 stories

The Race Media Ltd

Sports

4.9 • 764 Ratings

🗓️ 16 April 2020

⏱️ 45 minutes

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Summary

In late 1999 the combination of Jordan and Heinz-Harald Frentzen was at the peak of its powers, and it so nearly pulled off a world championship upset against the might of McLaren and Ferrari. Glenn Freeman is joined by Matt Beer and Edd Straw to revisit the final few races of the season to work out how Jordan found itself in an unlikely title fight. They assess how good the Jordan 199 really was given only one driver was doing anything with it (sorry Damon!), the fragilities that were costing McLaren and Mika Hakkinen, why Eddie Irvine's form was so inconsistent following his incredible spell in the summer after Michael Schumacher broke his leg, Jordan and McLaren's opposing theories on Hakkinen's memorable Monza blunder, the lap of Frentzen's life in qualifying at the Nurburgring, how the same problem that struck Frentzen's car while he was leading that race also resulted in Pedro Diniz's terrifying roll-hoop-busting crash at the start - and a rare explanation of the trick system that was behind that mysterious glitch! We also look at why the fizz went out of Jordan's season after that Nurburgring heartbreak, and why it would never scale those heights again.

HAVE YOUR SAY: Get your questions in for our series finale to @wearetherace on social media, using the #BringBackV10s to ask us anything about F1 from 1989-2005!

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Transcript

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0:00.0	How could an independent F1 team possibly dream of fighting for the World Championship?
0:11.0	It's unthinkable today, but two decades ago it happened when Jordan came as close as it ever would to the big prize.
0:19.0	We're of course talking about the 1999 F1 season, where after Michael Schumacher broke his
0:23.7	leg at Silverstone, Mika Hakenen eventually fended off Ferrari's Eddie Irvine and Jordan's
0:29.1	Heinzheld Frensen to win his second world championship.
0:32.4	Welcome to the latest episode of Bring Back V10s, the trip back into F1's past brought
0:37.4	to you by The Race.
0:38.9	We're approaching the halfway stage of our first series, so please remember to get in touch
0:43.1	with at We Are the Race on social media to let us know what you think of the podcast so far
0:48.0	and what you'd like us to talk about in our series finale and make sure you use the hashtag
0:52.4	Bring Back V10s. So joining me to look at jordan's finest
0:56.7	hour on matt beer and ed straw back from last week's damon hill 1997 hungry episode
1:02.6	thanks for coming back gentlemen and we'll crack straight on with our traditional opening question
1:07.5	which is when you think of jordan 1999 season, what's the first thing
1:11.9	that comes to your mind and you're not allowed to say Damon Hill being rubbish?
1:16.4	A yellow car retiring from the race lead in a slightly strange way.
1:20.5	Mine's very, very similar. Just the image of the car stopped where it was by the first corner.
1:26.3	If you mentioned Jordan 99, that's just the thing that leaps to mind. I don't know. It's just seared on the brain, I guess. Yeah, and that's, of course, when Frensen broke down at the Nürberg ring, and that was really when this championship dream shattered. But we'll come back to that shortly. 1999, an amazing season in Formula One.
1:44.4	And there'll be so many more times in the future of Bring Back V10s
1:47.3	where we revisit this season and some of the things that went on.
1:51.4	But towards the end of the season is where we're focused today
1:54.0	because that's when we really, everyone started to get the feeling
	...

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