Jaguar Hope for Season Turnaround

Jaguar have given Australian Mark Webber a more powerful engine for Sunday's US Grand Prix to try and turn around a disappointing season.

"This race we've got an upgrade that we're trying with Mark, we've just built one engine and see how it goes," said team principal Tony Purnell. "There's always a risk when you try an engine for a first time."

Ford-owned Jaguar are ninth in Formula One's 10-team Championship with three points, all scored by the highly rated Webber who is expected to leave at the end of the season for Williams. Jordan, whose engines are also provided by Ford-owned Cosworth, are seventh.

"We need to pull something out of the bag to give everybody in the team a lift," said Purnell.

Sunday's race in Indianapolis is a home event for the team's parent company and comes halfway through a tough season for Jaguar after the early high of Webber's second place on the grid in Malaysia in March.

"We're thoroughly disappointed with the season," said Purnell. "We started with a very nice quick car and we've been let down by a lot of small, small mistakes.

"We have a limited resource and we put the effort into what we thought was important with the money we had. And I think we've been quite successful there.

"But in Formula One you've got to be good at everything, you can't make any mistakes anywhere; it's a no-prisoners game. And the areas that we haven't been so strong on have hurt us very badly."

Both Webber and Austrian Christian Klien have suffered from poor starts and the Australian retired in the last race in Canada with suspension failure after his teammate was pitched into him at the second corner.

Purnell, however, said he was happy with the team's achievements compared to the likes of Toyota or McLaren who had scored scarcely more points.

"To produce something that can even touch the McLarens, who are undoubtedly operating on double the money that we have, I think it's outstanding," he said. "So I'm actually proud of what everybody's done over the last 18 months at Jaguar."

Purnell said the standard, set by Ferrari, was so good that even fantastic lap times compared to last year now looked ordinary.

"When we were designing the car, if anybody had mentioned the sort of lap times it's capable of, sort of nine months ago, we would have shaken our heads and said just 'no way, we're not going to make a car that good'.

"I have to say that it's one of the problems when you've got an adequate budget but not an excess, because money can mask mistakes. It's very easy to buy your way out of mistakes. We can't do that.

"We've got to get everything right, and if we don't, we're punished."