Irvine and Jaguar leave them sweating

The Ulsterman followed-up scoring Jaguar's maiden podium in Monaco with another impressive display in Canada as he clocked the third fastest time in Friday's free practice and led the chase of the dominant McLaren-Mercedes duo.

Irvine insisted it was too early to tell if his third place in Monte Carlo can be repeated in Montreal, but he is relishing the prospect of a more competitive car in races to come.

"This was a step in the right direction, but it wasn't a particularly good lap I have to say," said Irvine, who finished just over 0.8 seconds off the pace set by Mika Hakkinen. "The car's reasonable, though it is not as good as I thought it would be here, but we've got new bits on it that are affecting the handling - although maybe they are making it go a bit quicker.

"We didn't really have the chance to confirm it properly at Magny-Cours (during last week's test) but we thought we'd go with them and see.

"Overall I'd say we are in good shape. But the jury's still out. Friday is Friday and Saturday is a totally different story so we'll let people sweat a bit tonight and then we'll see what the story is tomorrow.

"The Michelins look good on one hand and not so good on the other," he added. "I'm not going to go into detail about this but there's certainly pros and cons to the tyres around this circuit."

Irvine paid tribute to the work done by the team back at the Milton Keynes base, saying it was a major factor in Jaguar's recent improvement after they started the season with an uncompetitive car.

"The car, when it came, was massively slow as we know and it wouldn't have been hard to improve it," added Irvine, whose third spot in Monaco was the team's first points of the season. "We have made a good step and there are more good steps to come in the next two or three races.

"That's what makes the difference, the guys back at the factory making the car go quicker. That's what drives everyone along. If there's no ideas coming out of the factory, the car isn't going to go quicker. At the minute they are doing a good job back there."