?45,000 crash for Pizzonia

New Jaguar signing Antonio Pizzonia ended the team's three day test session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Barcelona with a rather expensive crash. After being second quickest and then topping the times in the first two days, Pizzonia had engine ...

New Jaguar signing Antonio Pizzonia ended the team's three day test session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Barcelona with a rather expensive crash. After being second quickest and then topping the times in the first two days, Pizzonia had engine troubles on his race car yesterday and only completed a handful of laps. Exchanging the R3 for a Jaguar S-Type road car, Pizzonia took to the track for a promotional run and promptly crashed the ?45,000 car.

Antonio Pizzonia.

Photo by Jaguar Racing.

Entering a corner at approx 150mph, the Brazilian apparently lost control of the saloon and it flipped, then somersaulted into the barrier. Pizzonia and the three passengers were not seriously hurt although presumably it was not quite the experience the passengers had expected. The car was beyond repair but Pizzonia declared fit, if a little shocked, after a medical check up.

Jaguar spokesman Nav Sidhu told the BBC: "From having seen the footage it looks like he went into the first corner too fast and lost control of the car but thankfully everybody is okay. Antonio will hopefully carry on tomorrow with some testing duties. They are all obviously a bit shocked as one would expect."

To say it has been a bad week for Jaguar would be a bit of an understatement: after announcing job cuts recently, Ford then dispensed of the services of team boss Niki Lauda rather abruptly. In testing, first Mark Webber then Pizzonia had troubled times with various gremlins that prevented any decent track time. Pizzonia destroying a ?45,000 car was just the icing on the cake. However, it's a credit to Jaguar that its car was robust enough to let four people walk away from a high speed crash.