Irvine Claims Jaguar are 'a Bit Lost'

Formula One's "Big Cat" has been sick since the start of the year but Jaguar are still groping in the dark for a cure for their new car's problems.

That was essentially Eddie Irvine's assessment of the situation at his team on Friday after a wet and frustrating free practice for the San Marino Grand Prix left him just 13th fastest.

Jaguar had last month considered wheeling out their old car for Sunday's race at Imola before deciding to persevere with the new one which will hold more potential once the aerodynamic problems are resolved.

"I am not happy with the (new) R3," said Irvine when asked at a news conference about the two cars. "We know the R2 is the quicker car but potentially it is not.

"There is a problem and we are trying to figure out what the problem is. We know the symptoms but we don't know what the disease is at the minute. We are eliminating things slowly but surely. That's all we can do because we don't know what the problem is.

"We changed so many things from last year to this...now we are going to have to go back to all those things to figure out which one is causing this problem that we have."

Jaguar did a head-to-head test with both cars in Barcelona last month and have since tested new developments on the R3 in the hope of finding a fix.

But Irvine, who took a surprise three points in Australia - the only ones of the season so far - when half the field crashed out, said the most recent test had been a disappointment.

The team had high hopes after the last race in Brazil that they had diagnosed the problem but Irvine said two "quite major changes" had produced no improvement.

"It didn't impact the problem whatsoever," he said. "So we are testing something else at Silverstone and it might be the answer, it might not. We are really a little bit lost to be honest."