Irvine Hopes to Complain Less in 2001

Jaguar driver Eddie Irvine is hoping to complain less and win more points in Formula One next season.

"My job last year was to complain a lot about what was wrong," said the Northern Irishman at Tuesday's launch of the team's new R2 car for 2001.

"Hopefully, I complained about the right things. Hopefully, I won't have the need to do so much complaining.

"Last year was a year when we had to put a finger on all the problems so we didn't make mistakes this year."

Irvine scored all four of Jaguar's points in a disappointing 2000, their debut season after Ford bought out former champion Jackie Stewart's team and renamed it after their prestige Jaguar marque.

The Briton regularly grumbled as the season wore on about the Jaguar's clutch, speed and handling.

But Irvine said the arrival of American Bobby Rahal in December as team principal had given Jaguar the structure and organisation that it was lacking.

"With Bobby coming to the team we've got a day to day force," he said.

"He's there all the time and I can call him - as it was at Ferrari when I'd call (team boss Jean) Todt or (technical director Ross) Brawn and they'd make the changes.

"Now we've got that sort of infrastructure in place."

Irvine said that in retrospect he had not realised how unprepared Jaguar were for the start of 2000.

"We had a problem with the engine which cost us a lot, a problem with the clutch which cost us a lot and obviously the handling of the car wasn't ideal."

No Major Issues

"But this year the clutch shouldn't be an issue, the engine is a development of what was a good engine from last year and we've tried to work on the aerodynamics.

"I don't think we should have major issues.

"I think the team's going to operate better in pit stops and generally because it's something we were poor on last year and we've put things in place."

Irvine, runner-up in the championship with Ferrari in 1999 after Michael Schumacher broke his leg in a crash at the British Grand Prix at Silverstone in July, will be Jaguar's recognised number one driver in 2001.

His best result last season was fourth in Monaco and he said he expected to do better this year.

"It will be difficult to do that badly again," he said. "If we do that bad again we deserve a good kicking.

"But we could have a much better year and finish seventh 14 times which would be a very strong year but still with no points all the same.

"Yet you can have a really bad year and win a race because everyone else had a problem that day.

"It's not just points, because really there's only three points available for fifth and sixth because the big guys pretty much have it tied up at the front."

Champions Ferrari and runners-up McLaren won all 17 races between them last season.

"It's going to be a tough year but we're going to perform much better," said Irvine.

"Whether we're going to get 30, 40, 10 or five points I don't know. But a repeat of last year is not going to be the case, that's for sure.

"I don't see us outperforming McLaren and Ferrari but the potential is there to beat them from time to time when they make mistakes."

Irvine said BAR, Benetton and Jordan remained more realistic rivals and "if we can qualify five, six, seven or eight all year we've done a fantastic job.

"Respectability would even be less than that because it's so damn tough out there."