Friday March 8th, 2002

The Jaguar Racing team will wait to see their performance at next week's Malaysian Grand Prix before deciding if they will continue using their Cosworth-powered R3 chassis or revert to last year's R2.

The Milton Keynes-based squad struggled at the season opening Australian Grand Prix, with drivers Eddie Irvine and Pedro de la Rosa qualifying in 19th a 20th positions respectively, behind the Minardi of Australia's local hero Mark Webber.

Since then, the team have admitted that they were considering reverting to last year's car instead of continuing with the problematic R3. However, team boss Niki Lauda has revealed that they haven't yet made up their minds, and will most likely decide after the race in Sepang next week.

"Apart from the three points we took away from the Australian Grand Prix, there was very little cause for celebration after an incredibly difficult weekend," admitted Lauda. "There is no question about it – we must improve quickly and address the issues we have with the Jaguar R3.

"There is very little we could do with the cars between Australia and Malaysia because they didn't return back to the factory. Only after Malaysia will we have an opportunity to modify the car and do a proper post-mortem on the package before the Brazilian Grand Prix.

"We haven't taken any decisions yet as to what will happen after Malaysia and given that our race pace in Melbourne was significantly better than our qualifying performance, it is obvious that we have yet to unlock R3's true potential over a proper one hour qualifying session. Judgement day beckons, as they say."

The R3, which was one of the first cars to be unveiled this season, was found to have a design problem in its front wing, which forced the Ford-owned squad to go back to the drawing board. As a result of the incident, technical director Steve Nichols was sacked and has been temporarily replaced by Gunther Steiner.

Published at 15:18:23 GMT