Imation renews deal with Jordan.

There was one piece of good news for the embattled Jordan Grand Prix team today, when it was able to confirm a renewal of its sponsorship agreement with Imation Corporation, one of the world's leading manufacturers of removable data storage products.

The agreement takes the two companies into the fifth consecutive year of their association and, in addition to sponsorship investment, Imation will continue to supply a range of data storage media to Jordan for use across a wide range of IT applications, including the storage of telemetry data generated at races and tests, plus data generated by the team's windtunnel and design office.

In 2003 Imation will be known as an 'official technology partner' to the Jordan-Ford operation.

"We look back on four exciting years of building our relationship with Jordan Grand Prix," commented Imation Europe executive director Brian J Plummer, "Since 1999, we have been working closely with Jordan to capitalise on our unique relationship. We have been able to take advantage of the many opportunities that our relationship offers to us, both for marketing and communication purposes, and Jordan has allowed us to demonstrate the capability of our technologies to viewers of Formula One racing.

"The partnership, initially geared towards technical co-operation, provides an outstanding forum for showcasing our technological competence as a world leader in IT storage applications."

After losing title sponsor DHL to the global economic downturn, team boss Eddie Jordan welcomed the return of Imation for a fifth year.

"It's very satisfying to maintain our association with Imation into a fifth season, as it demonstrates the strength of our partnership and their commitment to Formula One with Jordan," he said, "The use of Imation's technology within the team show-cases its capabilities and demonstrates the quality of their products in terms of speed, reliability and performance."

Imation Europe's partnership with Jordan provides a marketing platform which has previously been used to target its business-to-business needs. This will change in 2003 as Imation's main focus for the Jordan sponsorship will shift towards consumer marketing programmes.