Gearing up to make big noise

Formula One Season previewJustin Hynes talks to Jordan's Nick Heidfeld about his drive to finally deliver on early promise

In Formula One, timing is everything. We're not talking the tenths and hundredths of a second that separate pole position from mid-grid obscurity.

It's being the face that fits, about right place, right time. And what can happen to you if your timing gets all loused up.

Take Nick Heidfeld. Here he is sitting in a draughty, sub-zero garage at Silverstone in February, an impossibly slight figure, swamped in yellow overalls, blinking into the cold, harsh light of a television camera. He's explaining in careful, flat tones just how he got here. He looks like he's wondering just how the hell he did get here.

This after all was the future of Formula One. At least in 1999 he was. Signed on a multi-year contract to engine powerhouse Mercedes, in the process of thundering to back-to-back championships, Heidfeld was thundering to a blitzkrieg F3000 championship title in McLaren's junior team. He was a shoo-in for a move to the F1 champions as soon as a seat became vacant.

The following season he moved straight to the "Show". Sure, a drive with Prost wasn't first-draft stuff but it was meant to be a learning period, before McLaren boss Ron Dennis came calling. But he didn't call. And as Prost hit the skids he moved to Sauber. Fine. Better team, Ferrari engine. A step up the casting ladder. From bit-part player to supporting cast. Good timing.

Until into his life at Sauber in 2001 came a new team-mate. Some rookie kid, never sat in an F1 car. Only done a handful of Formula Renault races.

Peter Sauber has to beg and plead to the FIA to get the kid the superlicence he needed to race. What's his name? Something Finnish, sounds like Hakkinen but not. Whatever.

Two years later and Heidfeld's clock had stopped. He was being bundled unceremoniously out the door by Peter Sauber as Ferrari fancied a look at Giancarlo Fisichella and would like to give their test driver Felipe Massa another crack. His Mercedes contract was suddenly ash and that kid, that baby-faced, what's-his-name Finn, Kimi Raikkonen, had his seat at McLaren . . . Dear Mr Heidfeld, thank you for you interest in our company but at the present time we have no . . .

But it's not the end of the tale. For a few months, Heidfeld can't get arrested in Formula One. Until he gets the call. Eddie Jordan, whose choices over the past season - of legal adversaries, of manufacturers flirted with while contracted to others - speak of a sense of timing similarly out of whack.

He wants Heidfeld to come and test for the team in Barcelona in December.

Every old sock meets an old shoe. And four months later here's Nick Heidfeld, staring into the lens, wondering how the hell this happened.

"I really thought I would still be in F1, but then nothing happened," he says of the deafening silence that followed his last race for and exit from Sauber at Suzuka last October. "I though I had always done a good job. I always tried my best."

And he looks blankly at you, a little non-plussed, still wondering .

It has often been the way with Heidfeld. His pace and ability were remarked on early but on his ascension to the white-hot world of the F1 paddock, the noise being made about him grew fainter and fainter amid the clamour surrounding Raikkonen, then Jenson Button, then Fernando Alonso, Mark Webber. Heidfeld, quietly going about his very solid, very creditable business of matching or beating every team-mate he has had, from Raikkonen to Heinz-Harald Frentzen to Felipe, was ignored.

He's asked if he thinks his reticence towards self-promotion has harmed his progress. He momentarily looks taken aback, failing to understand he is seen as reticent. But then he nods imperceptibly before saying, quietly, "I think so."

"But what else can I do?" he asks. "It might help if I was a different character but I'd find it very hard to change. There are some small things I can do; try to point out the more positive things at a circuit. I think it's not so clever, maybe, to admit that you made mistakes. But then if you complain about everything else, it just sounds like you're making excuses. It's . . . difficult."

In all of this insecurity there is a strange echo of Frentzen.

The now-retired driver joined Jordan in 1999 from Williams a broken man. Two years of mental jousting with Jacques Villeneuve, and with Frank Williams and technical director Patrick Head cast public and vocal doubt on his paddock clubability.

Frentzen arrived in the Melbourne paddock with Jordan looking like a punch-drunk boxer, slow to answer, doubtful of his place in the world, confused by his own confusion.

By year end he was third in the championship with two grand prix wins and the speed that had once led to him being tipped for greatness ahead of Michael Schumacher when the pair raced as juniors was being acknowledged again.

Curiously too, Heidfeld and Frentzen are from the town of Mönchengladbach in north-western Germany. Both are quiet individuals, though Frentzen was possessed of an endearing wit of Sahara-like dryness.

Heidfeld is, if anything, more serious, even more reserved.

But there the similarities end. Jordan 2004 is not the team of 1999. Then others were struggling and Jordan were peaking with a heavy but potent engine and a bullet-proof chassis. Things are different now. The strugglers of 1999, backed to the hilt by manufacturers, have disappeared over the technical horizon. Jordan, down on budget, down on staff, down on power are playing eternal catch-up.

So, it ain't the most glamorous gig in the world but it's kept Heidfeld in the game. It's a chance, a chance to prove that the skills which made him the future a few short years ago can convince someone further up the grid that he might just be their present.

"Yes, I guess it is the aim," he says. "That's what I'm trying to do. I want to make people realise that just because these things have happened it doesn't mean I'm not good any more."

And then for the first time, the quietness that goes with a lot of what Nick Heidfeld does gives way to a steelier edge. "Look, I'm not in F1 just to be in F1. I came into the sport to fight for championships, and that's what I want to do."

Jordan though is currently not the place to be seriously harbouring that ambition. Ninth of 10 teams last season, more of the same is on the cards this season. Eddie Jordan has even spoken of the year as one of consolidation before forward movement thereafter.

Ask Heidfeld if the parlous state of the team is something that feels great for him to battle against.

"No," he says sharply. "I'm fully motivated. I always give it 100 per cent."

And then the doubts surface again as he offers a wry smile.

"If I say I'm more motivated than ever people will say 'well why wasn't he that motivated last year?'. You can't win. But whatever happens I'll stay focused, and I always try to learn from my mistakes."

The motivation leads him, in time-honoured fashion, to talk up his new car.

"When I drove the EJ13, I was surprised, it was better than I expected, not so different from the Sauber. In fact it was easier to drive. And the 14 is much better again. There is less vibration, the power use is much better and it's much stiffer. It's good.

"We can do something with it this year," he insists. "Keep improving, start moving forward, keep a few teams behind us. It's hard to say right now who's doing what. Jordan could show something. There is a chance."

A chance. It's all both Jordan and Heidfeld can ask of the sport at the moment, a slim shot at redemption. An opportunity to reset the clocks ticking down their time in the paddock. To get the timing right again.