Disaster for Jaguar

The performance capped a miserable start to the year for the Ford-owned team, which has struggled since an inherent aerodynamic problem was discovered on the R3 at its first ever test. However, things were not expected to be this bad and only the Minardi-Asiatech of Alex Yoong and the unfortunate Takuma Sato will start behind the green and white cars.

The drivers' efforts were compromised by the fact that they only managed one qualifying run before it started to rain midway through the session. Pedro de la Rosa's troubles were compounded by having to use the spare car and he was only just over a second inside of the 107 per cent limit!

With its Bicester wind tunnel still a month away from being operational, team principal Niki Lauda knows that the team faces an uphill battle to save face in the opening races of the season.

"You could call it that [a disaster] but we knew there was something wrong since we started testing at the beginning of January," he said. "We have a real problem with the aero - we don't have enough downforce. The situation with the weather was unfortunate because we could have been a couple of places forward."

However, 19th-placed Eddie Irvine felt there was little more to come from the car. "My first and only run was compromised because the brake balance moved rearward for some reason. At the most, I could have squeezed half a second more from the car, but that's hardly going to make a big difference given our current state."