Jaguar, Prost, BAR Notes

Red tape hits Jaguar plans

Being part of the Ford empire is already affecting Jaguars ambitions. The team is struggling to get their plans for a new wind tunnel, which will take 2.5 years to complete, approved within Ford. The team currently uses a wind-tunnel in California.

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Jenkins stung by roll-bar critisisms

Alan Jenkins, technical director at Prost, has acted angrily to the press responses over the cars failure to complete the harder roll-bar tests. "It's not good to have optional regulations. It should be a regulation or not. My obligation was to make cars legal, which we did".

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BAR admits it needs to perform

Craig Pollock has been speaking on his teams chances, and on Jacques Villeneuve.

"All Jacques wants to do is go forward and win races and I would say as a championship winning driver already he doesn't mind which team he's with as long as he can win... If he feels that he is going to win with the British American Racing-Honda package I think he'll stay. If we put together the right package there's no reason at all why we would lose Jacques Villeneuve. I know him better than anyone else, I know what makes him tick and it's up to us to actually listen to his feelings and try to do something about it."

"The main thing is if he feels the performance is coming and he feels the team is working in the right direction towards getting the performance for 2001, he'll probably make a very logical decision."

On the car, Pollock was more reserved. "The car seems to be very much more reliable than last year. In the very first test we could go out and complete a full race distance. In reality we don't really know where we are today. I don't think any team apart from McLaren really knows where they are in the field."

Stephen M Baines http://www.motorsport.org.uk