Irvine denies rumours of Jordan move

MOTOR SPORT: Eddie Irvine has emphatically denied rumours that he is to move back to Jordan after six years away from the Irish squad. On Thursday, lead Jordan driver Giancarlo Fisichella had hinted that the Irishman, whose Jaguar contract expires at the end of this season, could replace the under-fire Takuma Sato for 2003, but yesterday Irvine himself rubbished the speculation.

"This rumour comes up every year but of course it"s worse now because this year my contract runs out," said Irvine. "I don't know who started it. As far as I'm concerned it's rubbish. At the moment I'm just concentrating on trying to turn this team (Jaguar) around. I'm just focusing on my racing."

The speculation surrounding Irvine's movements at the end of the season is the first real sign that Formula One's mid-campaign silly season is kicking off and while Jordan sponsors Benson & Hedges would welcome the presence of so publicity-friendly and controversy-dogged a driver as Irvine, the likelihood is that he will see out one more season with Jaguar with the former Ferrari star believed to be currently in negotiations for an extension of his deal with the Ford-backed team.

Eddie Jordan also denied the rumours and also offered a vote of confidence to the under-pressure Takuma Sato. "It's entirely fabricated by the media and not based on anything. I firmly believe Takuma's time will come very soon." The first two years of Sato's multi-year deal with Jordan are also believed to be a water-tight arrangement which is only likely to be breached if Honda withdraw their works support from the Irish team. That, though, looks more and more like a foregone conclusion and paddock rumour is increasingly linking Jordan with a bought-in supply of Cosworth engines for 2003.

Arrows have enjoyed some success this year as a Cosworth customer with Heinz-Harald Frentzen twice finishing in scoring positions for Tom Walkinshaw's team and a Jordan deal for Cosworths may not be the retrograde step it initially appears. Cosworth insiders are reported to be ecstatic with the potential of the 2003 engine they are currently developing and unlike many customer arrangements, which involve a supply of year-old powerplants, a customer arrangement with Cosworth is likely to provide Jordan with the same unit that will run in the back of next year's Jaguar.

With the Irvine to Jordan speculation dying out and with the Montreal paddock seeming to abhor a vaccuum, the rumour mill quickly filled the gap with speculation, emanating from the Italian press, that, following the furore over Ferrari's team orders in Austria and a subsequent call to appear before a meeting of the FIA in Paris on June 26th, Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello may be more heavily sanctioned by the sport's governing body than initially supposed.

With little precedent for sanctioning teams for the imposition of team orders, it was believed the FIA's summons was little more than an exercise in being seen to do the right thing, but the latest speculation is suggesting that both Schumacher and Barrichello will receive a one-race ban when they appear before the organisation's legislators.

That ban would most likely be imposed at the British Grand Prix and would leave Ferrari having to field a driver line-up of test drivers Luciano Burti and Luca Badoer. Whether the FIA will opt for so radical a reprimand remains to be seen, but so far the proliferation of wild rumours spinning around the Montreal paddock this weekend says only that the heat of the Canadian summer is clearly going to some heads and that the sport's silly season has well and truly begun.

In the real world of preparation for tomorrow's Canadian Grand Prix, yesterday's free practice session revealed French tyre manufacturer Michelin to be winning the initial battles.

McLaren's David Coulthard set the fastest time of the day, with the Scotsman being immediately followed by Williams' Juan Pablo Montoya, the Colombian finishing the day just a tenth behind the Monaco GP winner.

Michael Schumacher stole into third in the closing seconds of the session, after spending much of the afternoon session languishing in the lower reaches of the top 10, the German confirming suspicions about Michelin supremacy by saying that he had suffered with blistering tyres during the afternoon session.

After the apparent aberration of Coulthard's win at Monaco, it is likely that normal championship service will be resumed in this afternoon's qualifying session and in tomorrow's race with Schumacher and Barrichello likely to be battling for supremacy with Williams' Montoya and Ralf Schumacher.

The younger Schumacher was triumphant in Montreal last year as his Michelin tyres served him well in race specification but the margin between the two tyre manufacturers is likely to be tighter this year.

Beyond tyre wear, Montreal is all about horsepower and its demands copperfasten the expectation that the fight for victory will once more restrict itself to Ferrari and Williams. Williams' partner BMW are believed to have upped the output of their engines to a whopping 840bhp, with 900 envisaged before the close of the season, and with Montreal consisting of a series of long flat out straights and hard-breaking corners, this weekend already seems to be playing into the hands of Montoya and Schumacher Jnr.

Jordan's Fisichella had to settle for the day's 12th fastest time, while team-mate Sato, struggling on his first visit to Montreal, ended his first day's work in 19th place.