worst handling car of 04

[jklein6419]

i dont know about you guys, but during the qualifying sessions this year i was always at the edge of my seat whenever the jordan would take to the track. i have never seen a car twitch so much in my life. while braking it would twitch, through the corner it would twitch, the the back end would alomost come around while exiting the corner.
what a pig of a car. what do you guys think the worst handling car was.

[Skam85]

the renault looked pretty dodgy to me, didnt see much footage of the jordan. as for the best handling car, probably ferrai/bar...jag even?

[Adam43]

The Renault is odd. It had unusual handling compared to the other F1 cars (due to the different design philosophy) and was prone to understeer, but was it the worst handling? I don't think so - you don't win at Monaco or get pole in the wet at Spa with a badly handling car!

Worst? I think Jordan, it looked a dog. Minardi wasn't too good, but for me I think the Jordan looked the worse when on track. Especially under braking. There were races when the drivers would brake almost in the middle of the track because the car didn't want to go in a straight line under braking. Terrible.

Others of note. Well I presume Jaguar was poor. And the Toyota was slow despite the engine. However these may not have been poor handling - they may have handled well, but were just slow.

McLaren apparently had a dodgy rear end for the first half of the season, but this was largely cured by the new car in France.

Overall, I agree with jklein6419, it is clearly the Jordan.

[GTRMagic]

Is a Minardi the best thing around? It was slower that a Faz at most tracks by 3 to 4 seconds a lap on a similar fuel strategy... and with a Cossie similar to Jordan and Jaguar, was fairly ordinary.... driving staff talent not withstanding...

[ASCII Man]

The Jordan for sure, that car looked more nervous than Woody Allen during a boxing match...

[Marbot]

It was interesting to note some of the in car footage,particularly on qually laps.The Ferraris and BAR's gave their drivers an easy time whereas the Minardi and Jordan drivers looked like they were doing a tarmac stage on a Rally,Alonso seemed to suffer understeer almost for the entire length of the track! Obviously some teams have work to do over the winter.

[luke]

Obviously the cars as such as the Jordon and Minardi have about as much grip as a wash board, but with the budget Minardi are on scraping around for pennies compared to Toyota's unending budget (billions+) and compare Minardi to Toyota, and you will find out that they are the most hard working team on the grid. (Especially when they're only about a second or two of Toyota).

As for the best car's handling it would have to be BAR very reliable (Jenson's car that is) and surf the kerbs, great handling.

[Kicking-back]

Sometimes the fastest car isn't always the best handling and vice versa.

Looking at it - the worst handling car does appear to be the Jordan, although Zsolt Baumgartner would make you think otherwise looking at the inputs he gives his Minardi.

[Knowlesy]

I think the minardi was the worst handling because it always looked undriveable. The Jordan appeared to improve a little to me.

[BootsOntheSide]

The Jordan looked incredibly twitchy in the corners,a dn was always threatening to spin. Heidfeld really did well to tame that thing. A lot of it might've bewen down to running little wing, to make up for the lack of engine power, but it may just have been inherently slow. The Minardi was nowhere near as bad.

Considering the engine's power, the Toyota chassis might've been as bad as the Jordan, as they were never competitive on the slower tracks. It was certainly the worst per dollar, while the Jaguar or BAR were probably the best.

[Adam43]

Originally posted by knowlesy
The Jordan appeared to improve a little to me.

I'd have said the opposite. I thought it got a little worse towards the end of the season. Although it may just be that I had noticed it more by then.

Boots, the Jaguar a good handling chassis. I agree you can have slow and good handling (250F), but the Jaguar never struck me as handling well and I don't remember the drivers commenting either?

[alesi95]

The Renault looked tricky to master. Williams weren't great either

[Knowlesy]

When i say a little, i mean microscopic improvements!

And this may have been down to Heidfelds ability. Certainly, i think Pantano made things look worse than they actually were.

[Nicholosophy]

It's not as if Pantano is the best driver in the world...

But no, the Jordan really wasn't a great car this year, and they probably couldn't do as much development as Eddie would have liked due to funding being tight.

[Adam43]

Well a bad handling car will not react to over corrections like Pantano gave it!

Webber @ Monaco http://www.planetf1.com/news/story_15661.shtml

Mark Webber has had a pretty miserable Monaco weekend, really struggling with the handling of the Jaguar at a circuit where handling is so important. He had his original engine transferred into the spare car, a 1:15.725 put him in P11.

Although the quotes from both drivers in Brasil seem to suggest they had a good balance: http://www.grandprix.com/race/r731qreport.html
CK:[quote] have been working hard with my engineers to find a good balance for the car and I managed this ahead of qualifying.../[quote]
MW:

We made the most of the second session and I was relatively comfortable with the car's set-up going into qualifying.

I have no feel for the Jag situation and am interested if the car's handling was any good.

[Adam43]

Nicko, welcome to Ten-tenths.

It was difficult for Jordan to develop the car and this is probably why it remained poor, but it was IMHO undoubtadly the worse handling car out there. This certainly didn't help Pantano who has shown himself to be a decent driver pre-F1. He wasn't going to get to grips with a car that gave him no confidence and never improved.

[Knowlesy]

The car handling of the Jag was supposedly good from what I have heard from Webber.

Its main problem was the tendency to overheat the rears and obviously the handling would then deteriorate.

[GP Racer]

Well, I can't add much to the conversation that hasn't already been said, but yeah, the Jordan always looked like it was driving on ice.

Scary at times, and I give Heidfeld, and Pantano credit just for keeping that thing on the track in the majority of races.

[Tweed]

Yep, Jordan and Minardi. Minardi had two drivers who both moved the wheel more than they needed to, and Heidfeld flattered the Jordan ( similar to Peter Windsor's feature on Jarno Trulli in F1 Racing, saying he can make a bad car look smooth ).
One of my highlights of the year though was standing at Maggots, watching Pantano leaving black lines on the way in in Friday practice!

[BootsOntheSide]

The Jaguar did seem to struggle later into a stint, but it was strong initially, and might've had more potential than it ever realised - maybe Bridgestones would've made the difference?