[jag-news] [F1] A bitter end to a disappointing Jaguar Racing weekend

["Jag-lovers News" <owner-jag-news@jag-lovers.org>]

19 August 2001 

Weather: Very hot, dry, sunny, air temperature 31 degrees, track temperature
41 degrees

A bitter end to an extremely disappointing weekend for Jaguar Racing.  On his
first lap Eddie Irvine spun-off into Turn 1 and retired from the race. Pedro
de la Rosa drove a strong and relentless race on a two-stop strategy to bring
his Jaguar R2 home in 11th position, having started from 13th position on the
grid. The team is now focused on concentrating their efforts towards the
two-day testing programme at Silverstone next week. With only four races left
and four constructors points from the season so far, Jaguar Racing must
endeavour to qualify higher at the forthcoming races to be in with a chance
of scoring points. 

Pedro de la Rosa
Position: 11th
Chassis: R2-07
T-Car chassis: R2-06
"We were expecting much more from this tight and twisty track and I am
disappointed with coming away from the weekend with no points or even being
close to fighting for points. We knew it was going to be hard after the
morning warm-up session and my first set of tyres began blistering quickly
after about five laps. My first stint was quite slow because of this and I
was struggling out there with a lack of rear grip. After taking new tyres at
the pitstop, my race pace improved a lot but I was too far back to make a
serious tend in today's race. We've been made to look average this weekend
and it's not an easy one to understand given our recent performances on high
downforce set-ups. Nonetheless, we will continue to work hard and over time,
I'm sure we'll get there. Progress has certainly been made this year but we
are not there yet." 

Eddie Irvine
Position: DNF
Chassis: R2-04
"That's probably one of the shortest races ever for me. It was my fault
completely. I was running down the dusty side of the track and simply went
into turn one too fast. The back end of the car spun around but I couldn't
catch it in time. It's been a very disappointing weekend from the minute we
arrived. I haven't been able to get the best out of the car all weekend and
starting from fourteenth on the grid was always a tall order in terms of
points contention. I made a big charge at the beginning but maybe I carried
too much into the corner and paid the price. With so few races left and only
four points earned from the season so far, we've got to address the issues
before Spa. I really thought we could achieve something here because of the
high downforce nature of the circuit, but we were obviously not as strong as
we hoped." 

Bobby Rahal, Chief Executive Officer & Team Principal
"That's not the weekend anybody envisaged and it's difficult at this stage to
know exactly why our performance was so different to our expectations. We've
worked very hard on developing the aero package on this car and relative
gains have been generated all season. This circuit, however, should have been
kinder to us. Eddie admittedly made a mistake into turn one and it's a big
shame to lose out like that but I question how realistic our chances would
have been anyway. Pedro drove a hard and determined race and I couldn't have
asked for more. We'll carry on developing the car in the hope that we can
salvage some points from the remaining races."


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