Australian GP Jaguar qualifying notes

Jaguar Racing's start to the new season was compromised by an accident for Luciano Burti when his car suffered a failure dur ing the third run of his qualifying session. Luciano was not hurt and the team will work late into the night in an effort to identify the problem that resulted in the accident and to re -build the car for tomorrow's race. Eddie Irvine, however, was reasonab ly pleased with the performance of his car that put him 12 th on the grid for the race. Luciano did not take any further part in qualifying with the team deciding to preserve the spare chassis for tomorrow. Luciano will begin the Australian Grand Prix from 21st on the grid.

Eddie Irvine
"I'm pretty positive about where I ended up which is much closer to the midfield runners than I thought I'd be. If we can find half a second we can improve a lot. From wh ere I am we can definitely score points which is good news. The new Series Two CR -3 Cosworth Racing engine is a big improvement and if we get things right tomorrow, I think there's a good chance of us finishing in the points."

Luciano Burti
"I don't really know what happened but it felt like something broke on the car. I was not pushing too hard at that stage and I felt something let go. There was little I could do to control the car at that speed and I s pun around several times and hit the wall. This hasn't been the start I was looking for and I hope that the team can re -build the car without too much trouble."

Bobby Rahal
"It was a disjointed session for Jaguar Raci ng. Eddie did a good job and drove some hard laps out there this afternoon. We'll work hard overnight to re -build Luciano's car. It's difficult to diagnose exactly what caused the accident, but Luciano seems adamant that something broke and I don't doubt i t. We didn't put Luciano in the spare car because we didn't want to over burden him and we wanted to preserve it for tomorrow. The new engine is very good and we are pleased with our level of reliability right now."

-Jaguar