JANUARY 22, 2004

Why the new Jaguar is not setting the world on fire

Jaguar Racing says that the new R5 does not have any fundamental problems despite the fact that the car has not produced any startling laps times this week in testing in Barcelona. Team sources says that the car has had its expected share of new car niggles but that the fact that the times are disappointing is because the Jaguar drivers have not even thought about going for serious lap times yet.

"We do not have an aerodynamic issue," said a Jaguar source. "The windtunnel results match those we are getting on the track. We are not surprised that people have seen we are not doing fast times but that is the plan. we are going through all the mechanical items to check that everything works before we do any performance runs."

Our spies in the team say that one of the delaying matters has been a suspension failure on one of the two R4 interim cars which are at the circuit. These two have different specifications and Mark Webber was due to do back-to-back tests with these and the R5. When one of the R4s had a failure the programme had to be changed. Webber did not do much running yesterday because new parts were being sent out from Britain and Christian Klien has a series of minor problems with the R5 which restricted his running. One of these is believed to have been the gearbox and another a problem with the power-steering. Modifications were made and on Thursday Klien went back to doing basic checks of wing settings, weight distribution and other work, while webber tried to catch up on his work with 144 laps of the track today.

The good news therefore is that we can expect to see some impressive times when Jaguar does decide to give away a few of its secrets.