Saturday April 22nd, 2000

by Alan Baldwin

Eddie Irvine will start Sunday's British Grand Prix in the spare Jaguar after his regular car was damaged in a collision on Saturday.

"I'll use the spare car but it seems fine," he said. "But obviously my car had a better engine than the spare."

Irvine skidded off after four laps in Saturday's opening pre-qualifying practice session and banged into the stationary Williams of British compatriot Jenson Button as he came to a halt by the tyre wall.

The Northern Ireland driver, who joined Jaguar after finishing world championship runner-up last season with Ferrari, said the impact was not dangerous as he was travelling so slowly at the time.

But he was surprised by the amount of damage the impact did to the central "tub" of his car.

"It wrecked the tub which is amazing, to wreck a tub at that speed. It sort of says that the FIA test isn't quite strong enough," he said.

Sunday's race will be Jaguar's British Grand Prix debut and Silverstone's main straight is decked out in the team's green and white colours with a gleaming silver leaping Jaguar standing out over the team's hospitality centre in the paddock.

But Irvine was distinctly muted about whether the fans, that Jaguar officials hope will form a "sea of green" in the stands, will have anything to cheer about.

He qualified ninth -- with team mate Johnny Herbert 14th -- and said the lack of testing, due to bad weather and time lost due to mechanical failures, was taking its toll.

Jaguar have yet to take a point and Irvine has finished just one race out of three so far.

"We've got to improve the car, we've got to improve the gear change, we've got to improve the engine. There's so many areas where what we have we're not optimising because we just don't get any testing.

"It's just impossible. We haven't had a chance really. Everywhere where we've been testing it's been raining and unpleasant and you just can't get ahead. We've different aerodynamics to try but we don't want to put them on because we haven't been able to do a proper back-to-back test.

"I believe we have a lot more to sort out than other teams...we have so many things that just aren't performing to the maximum.

Irvine said he at least felt fortunate that Jaguar had a lot of room for improvement and could see area where they could gain time.

He was confident big advances could be made in Spain where the next grand prix is to be held after England.

"I want to go to Barcelona and do comparisons. Try and get the optimum aero set-up, try and get the optimum mechanical set-up, try and get the optimum gear change, try and get the optimum engine settings, try and get the optimum differential settings. These things. we're nowhere.

"We haven't optimised anywhere. We did so much testing at Ferrari that you could optimise everything. We haven't had any proper testing this year because of weather or mechanical problems."