JANUARY 29, 1996

Jordan and Camel - Part Two

THE new Jordan-Peugeot 196, revealed recently in Portugal, is a pretty standard F1 car - except that there is an awful lot of white space on the bodywork.

This is very different from recent Jordan F1 cars, which have traditionally been crammed with lots of small sponsors, the team's philosophy being that a lot of small amounts of money is just as good as a few big deals - although keeping a lot of small sponsors happy is a labor-intensive business.

It seems, however, that this has changed and the implication of the new color scheme is that the team has raised its rates and thus cleared away the small sponsors to make way for something else.

A comparison of the 1995 and 1996 cars reveals that Marlboro, Polti, the Irish Ministry of Tourism, Fujitsu ICL, Glasurit and Fiamm have all disappeared. Beta tools, Osama, Kremlyovskaya Vodka, Unipart and, most importantly, Total have all been given reduced space. And yet the sidepods, the top of the monocoque and much of the engine cover are devoid of any sponsorship.

This can only mean that Jordan has a major new sponsor. The team have denied links with Camel - despite the obvious connections between Camel, Jordan and Peugeot - and the fact that a return to F1 makes a great deal of commercial sense for Camel's parent company, RJR Nabisco.

Having said that, Eddie Jordan has admitted that something important is going to be announced in the middle of February.