Friday March 22nd, 2002

Jaguar will continue using their new but disappointing R3 Formula One car this season rather than reverting to last year's model, the team said on Friday.

"We're going to stick with the R3," team spokesman Nav Sidhu told Reuters after three days of testing both cars together in Barcelona before making a decision. "The R2 is a closed chapter."

Team principal Niki Lauda said the tests had revealed insufficient difference in performance to justify recalling the R2. Last week in Malaysia the Austrian said the old car might be brought back into service for the first European race at Imola in early April while deep-seated design problems with the R3 were sorted out.

"The performance differential between the two is just not big enough to go on with last year's car," Lauda told Jaguar's website. "Also we cannot afford to spend precious resources on any kind of parallel development, so this is where we are and I am satisfied we have done everything to make sure that our next move is forward."

The new R3 has been troubled since its launch in January, needing extensive modifications and aerodynamic changes before the start of the season. Briton Eddie Irvine finished a lucky fourth in Australia but complained at the last Malaysian Grand Prix that his lap times in qualifying were considerably slower than they had been in 2001.

Jaguar were already committed to taking the R3 to next week's race in Brazil. Irvine and Spaniard Pedro de la Rosa tested both cars each on Friday, and Sidhu said De La Rosa had carried out some very good work earlier in the week.

"He did more than two race distances and made a lot of changes to the car that has resulted in a very small disparity between the R2 and R3. "It's down to a few tenths of a second now."

Jaguar are due to have their new British wind tunnel fully functioning in the next week and that is also expected to speed up development work on the aerodynamic side. The team have had to struggle until now with a wind tunnel in California.

De la Rosa lapped at the Circuit de Catalunya on Friday with a time of 1:19.828 while Irvine's fastest was 1:19.904.

Published at 18:38:14 GMT