Monday March 25th, 2002

The Jaguar team are expecting another tough race at his weekend's Brazilian Grand Prix, according to their boss Niki Lauda.

The Milton Keynes-based squad have struggled so far this year despite a fourth place finish at the season opening Australian Grand Prix, fighting for the final places of the grid both in Australian and Malaysia.

The team carried out back-to-back tests of their R3 and R2 cars at Barcelona last week in order to decide which car to use in the next few races after the new Cosworth-powered machine has proved to be uncompetitive.

But the R2 was not quick enough for Jaguar to revert to it, and the team decided to continue with the development of the new R3. With the recalcitrant car, Lauda is expecting to struggle again at the Interlagos circuit next weekend.

"Brazil... will be another tough weekend for us," said the Austrian. "We will work very hard at optimising the car's balance and set-up on Friday and then aim for better qualifying positions on Saturday.

"Not an easy task given that we haven't had time to make any significant changes to this car since it arrived from Malaysia. Right now we are making our own lives hard by starting from the back of the grid and this is why we must improve our qualifying positions quickly.

"We are not going to find an overnight fix and Brazil will again push everyone to the limit. Nonetheless, we are working on some ideas right now and after Brazil we'll hit the test track again in an effort to better understand the way forward from here."

Published at 17:23:22 GMT