Jaguar buoyed by Friday practice promise

Eddie Irvine finished the day fifth fastest with rookie team mate Luciano Burti just three places behind on his first visit to the Malaysian venue. The Milton Keynes-based team ended the day leading all the other Michelin runners, including the fancied Williams-BMW outfit.

"We are certainly going to be more competitive than we were in Melbourne," said Irvine. "We need to work on the car's handling overnight and, if we can get to grips with this, we could be reasonably competitive in qualifying, but I would not expect to be as far up the grid as fifth."

Burti, whose place in the team is under threat from test driver Pedro de la Rosa - who has been guaranteed a race seat with the team next year - was also happy with his performance.

"This was not only Michelin's first time at Sepang but it was also mine," said. Burti "I had to use the first session to familiarise myself with the track. There's still more to come for tomorrow and I hope to extract more time out of the car for qualifying."

Team boss Bobby Rahal balanced his optimism with a realistic view of how the team compares with its more experienced rivals. He cited some post-Melbourne developments as a reason for the squad's upturn of form.

"We came here with some new components and, having tried them today, we feel that we have a better understanding of the car, but we still have a long way to go," said Rahal. "The Michelin tyres are working reasonably well and the wear rate is far better here than it was in Melbourne.

"Right now, we are not entirely sure which way we want to go on tyres, but there isn't any doubt that Michelin has made progress since Melbourne," he added.