Jaguar Pleased to be Closer to Williams

The Jaguar team were pleased to be so close to their Michelin-shod rivals of the Williams team in today's qualifying for the British Grand Prix at Silverstone.

Spaniard Pedro de la Rosa finished the day in thirteenth position, the Jaguar driver benefiting from the increased track temperatures. De la Rosa also praised the car's new aerodynamic package and admitted he was glad to be close to the top Michelin team Williams.

"That was a pleasing qualifying session and the increasing track temperature certainly helped our cause," said de la Rosa. "The car felt well balanced throughout and I think that's the closest we have ever been to the top Michelin runners."

"The new aero package is definitely a step forward and because we hadn't even done a proper test with it, I'm sure there's more pace to extract from it - something we will work on next week at the Monza test. There's a positive mood in the camp and as always, we will be looking to exploit our strong race pace tomorrow."

Eddie Irvine was also happy with his day's work despite enduring a troubled qualifying. The Ulsterman, who missed the Silverstone and Monza testing sessiona due to neck pains, was forced to take the spare Jaguar, which was set up for de la Rosa, after his race car suffered a mechanical failure, finishing in fifteenth place.

"We have never been that close to the BMW Williams boys before and I'm encouraged by that," admitted Irvine. "There's no point in benchmarking our package to the pole position time and the best yardstick of our development has to be the top Michelin runners.

"As for the problem with my car, it's been diagnosed as a push-rod failure on the front left - same problem as Montoya I believe. Nonetheless, I feel quite positive about the package we have right now and as we've proved in recent races, you can't rule the Jaguars out of points contention from where we are starting."