De la Rosa snubs Prost for Jaguar

De la Rosa, unexpectedly dropped by the Arrows team at the end of last month to make way for young Brazilian Enrique Bernoldi, was announced as Prost's third driver just 10 days ago. But, in a surprise U-turn, the Spaniard is thought to have preferred his chances with Jaguar and signed a deal with the Milton Keynes-based team.

"It is a strange decision," an F1 insider told Autosport.com, "but I can see why Pedro has made the move. Jaguar is much better for him in the long term."

Alain Prost took de la Rosa under his wing and signed him as development driver alongside Jean Alesi and Gaston Mazzacane, but Pedro out-paced Mazzacane during testing last week, fuelling speculation that he could be in line to replace the Argentinian.

The prospect of a race seat in the impressive 2001 Prost-Ferrari, which broke the lap record at Estoril with Alesi behind the wheel last week, was either not enough to keep de la Rosa with the Paris-based team or it was not available. He now appears to have chosen the Big Cat for the long term.

After being dumped by Arrows, de la Rosa was less concerned with securing a replacement race deal for this year and more intent on finding a guaranteed drive for 2002. Speculation that he may replace either Eddie Irvine or Luciano Burti is extremely wide of the mark, but a potential move to the race team next year will help to keep the current duo on their toes.

The news of de la Rosa's move to Jaguar will come as a blow to current test driver Tomas Scheckter. The son of 1979 F1 world champion Jody has only spent two days in the 2001-spec R2 at Barcelona since its launch last month and was more than two seconds slower than Burti.