De la Rosa Unable to Maximise Jaguar's Potential

Spanish driver Pedro de la Rosa impressed with his Jaguar in today's practice session for the Italian Grand Prix, setting the fourth quickest time of the day behind the two Williams drivers and Michael Schumacher's Ferrari.

However, the Catalan said his Cosworth-powered car had the potential to go faster if they can solve the balance problems.

"We found a very different track this morning compared to the one we tested on a few weeks ago," admitted de la Rosa. "We haven't extracted the best from the car yet and our balance issue isn't helping. There's a fair deal of work ahead of us, but I'm sure we can get more out of this package.

"We had a very good test at Monza a few weeks ago and while the weather conditions were better suited to us then, there's still scope for a better performance tomorrow."

Teammate Eddie Irvine was not as lucky as de la Rosa, the Irishman spinning off the track at the beginning of the afternoon session. Irvine, who has scored four of the five points of the Jaguar team, finished the day in a disappointing 19th position but vowed to continue working to improve in qualifying.

"We didn't learn as much as we would have liked, and going off like that didn't exactly help either," admitted Irvine. "The rear brake bias wasn't correctly set and that's what caused me to spin, under braking into the chicane.

"The car feels much better here than it has done at other circuits and tomorrow morning will allow us to make more improvements before qualifying."