Jaguar hope for Silverstone improvement

Jaguar Racing are hoping to see an improvement in their dismal fortunes when they introduce a new aerodynamic package for the British Grand Prix at Silverstone in July. In pre-season testing Jaguar were dismayed to find the aerodynamics of the R3 ...

Jaguar Racing are hoping to see an improvement in their dismal fortunes when they introduce a new aerodynamic package for the British Grand Prix at Silverstone in July. In pre-season testing Jaguar were dismayed to find the aerodynamics of the R3 were seriously flawed and a hasty re-think was needed. Since then the team have be beset by problems and off the pace in races.

Technical boss Guenther Steiner acknowledged the aerodynamic department had let them down but the team have since taken on more staff in an effort to sort out the glitches: "We are still continuing and this restructuring will go on for the rest of the year and even next year."

Eddie Irvine.

Photo by Eric Gilbert.

"You always have to move up to go quicker, but up to now we have to strengthen our aerodynamic department, which was the weakest link of the company in my opinion, not only down to people, but also we didn't have a wind tunnel to start with and the wind tunnel that we did use was in America."

"We used it two weeks a month and didn't have enough people and that is the biggest change we have made. We went from thirty people to fifty people in the aero department and our next gains will come from there, but we are still working on a lot of other parts on production and other parts of the company."

"We will have a package at Silverstone," Steiner confirmed. "We are still evaluating and testing. We start testing three weeks on the car and then we will see how much we gain. But everything is on course and in production now."

Jaguar driver Eddie Irvine recently said that he didn't think the team could produce a worse car that it had this year and would rather leave than be uncompetitive again next season. He too is pinning his hopes on the new aerodynamics.

"We weren't going to get anything," Irvine said of the Canadian Grand Prix, where both Jaguars retired. "So no problem, but we need to get on top of all these things. Until we get the new package, we're wasting our time."