EDDIE JORDAN revealed last night that he was about to issue instructions to his drivers when Ralf Schumacher ran into the back of his team mate Giancarlo Fisichella who was in second place in the Argentinian Grand Prix at the time.

"We were about to get on the radio to the drivers," he said last night. "In the race we don't use the radio much only for vital things and Giancarlo's English is not the best so there can be confusion. There was an incident earlier in the year where we said tyres and he thought we said fire and three places were lost.

"Ralf was clearly the quicker at that point, and in the normal set of circumstances we would have expected him to pass on the main straight. But they didn't get that far."

Issuing instructions to drivers is a very sensitive subject, best illustrated by the bitter exchange between the genial Rubens Barrichello and Jordan following the Italian Grand Prix at Monza last year. There the Brazilian was told to hold station behind team mate Martin Brundle in fourth place, and that incident was the final straw in souring relations between driver and team owner.

Jordan explained how relations between his two current drivers are at present: "Well, Giancarlo was very annoyed," said the Dubliner "He felt he had a chance maybe to win. In fairness to Ralf he went from the press conference straight to talk to Giancarlo and he took a lot of stick. He apologised and admitted he was wrong.

"I admire him for that because it's not something racing drivers are good at. They spoke for a while and agreed to travel back together on the plane and to come here for another meeting tomorrow (Tuesday) before testing."

Schumacher has some rebuilding of relations to do with the Benson & Hedges Jordan Peugeot team members. There were no celebrations by the mechanics - not even Schumacher's own mechanics - afterwards and no one went to cheer their man on the podium.

"But I think some good may come out of it," said the optimistic Jordan. "Up until now the drivers really hadn't had discussions about anything and this has broken the ice," he added.

Jordan then reflected on their race in general: "Overall the result has given a great lift to the team. We all felt the car is very quick but this was the first race we could prove it. Ralf was bold, but wasn't he brilliant too? He's a real tiger. His brother took a lot longer than three races to get to the podium." In fact Michael Schumacher finished third in his eighth race.

Eddie Irvine was unavailable last night, travelling to Barcelona for a test but Jordan spent some time with him after the race.

"I think it's interesting what's happened. The Italian media put him under pressure. Everyone at Ferrari likes him. They really got behind him this weekend, made sure his car had the best of everything, and it showed. He drove a fantastic race and his confidence will be really sky high for Imola," said Jordan.

"That talk about Gianni Morbidelli never made sense. There was a recent test where Morbidelli was trying their electronic adrift and after three days Schumacher arrived and was immediately 2.5 seconds quicker. There's no way anyone else is going to hop into that car and be faster than Irvine. He was never more than half a second adrift of Schumacher all weekend."

The tears of joy among the Ferrari mechanics as Irvine crossed the finish line was testimony to the affection they have for the Irish driver.

The overnight flight back from Buenos Aires was a breeding ground for gossip. The strongest story at disembarkation was that Damon Hill is leaving Arrows and trying to spring a berth at Benetton.