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Force India F1

Jordan says ‘Mallya will make it’

By: Karthik :+: Under: Force India F1, Formula 1, Motor Racing, Sports
On: ⋅ March 6, 2008 ⋅  Email this post ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment
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The Yellow Jordan F1 cars changed much of the F1 landscape.
Image from bennettsocial

For anyone who has been an F1 fan from before Narain started racing in F1, the name Eddie Jordan will ring a lot of bells. Besides Paul Stoddart, the owner of the erstwhile Minardi F1 team, Eddie is one of the few remaining personalities who is often called on by the F1 fraternity for views and opinions.

Mallya the amazing businessman that he is, apparently invited Eddie over to the Force India F1 factory, which was the Jordan factory back at the turn of the century, for the Christmas celebrations and Eddie has given Mallya the thumbs up.

Mallya invited Jordan to visit his old factory before Christmas, and the charismatic Irishman reckons the team has been rejuvenated.

Besides just calling Eddie over, Mallya made sure that he reminded the team about the legacy, the achievements and how it was possible to get back on the podium.

I was impressed when I went back at Christmas, I hadn’t been back for some years prior to that - in fact since the day I left, Vijay made a speech and I spoke to the whole team, mainly the people who had been there before. It was not an extraordinary motivational speech but it was about pulling together, making sure that we have a target, to focus and achieve it. He (Mallya) is a bit of a maverick and I like him. He’s not afraid to spend money, he stands up and says his dream is to be like Jordan again and winning races - not on a regular basis, because that is unlikely to happen. But he is going to make a big effort to get it where it was.

Personally, I think it was a very special invitation, much like what my dad would have done.

Commenting on the subject Mallya brought about the lack of spirit, which is understandable, given the switching of hands and a bleak future for the past few years. Assuming that funding and support for the team continues, we should see a happy and cheerful Force India F1, much like Super Aguri F1, who celebrate almost every time.

It is absolutely essential to have a high level of motivation amongst employees, people must be excited about what they do, they must relish challenge and when I inherited the team obviously that spirit was sadly lacking, In the last few months I think I have succeeded in bringing back that spirit and people are excited, you can see the energy in the garage and you can feel the energy in the motorhome, you can feel the energy back at Silverstone. There is a good old English saying which holds that history repeats itself. Jordan was a winning team in 1999, there’s no reason why it can’t go back to its winning ways in 2009.

2009 might be a little too early to start winning races, but more bizarre things have happened in F1.

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