Jaguar Set Sights on Best F1 Season Yet

Jaguar are aiming for their best Formula One season yet after ditching Brazilian Antonio Pizzonia for Briton Justin Wilson.

Wilson joined Jaguar from Minardi for the final five races of the season on Monday.

"One of the key things that made us side towards a decision like this was realising that fifth spot in the Championship was achievable," team boss Tony Purnell told reporters at the Jaguar factory today. "We thought that our chances of getting points would be improved by this change."

Jaguar are sixth overall, two points adrift of BAR with five races to go. Australian Mark Webber has scored all 12 Jaguar points. The Ford-owned team finished seventh last season, eighth in 2001 and ninth in their debut year before that.

"Justin clearly has been brought in to help us clinch fifth in the Championship if we can," said Webber. "I'll be absolutely stoked if we can get fifth. It will be awesome."

The Australian said he looked forward to having a more competitive teammate than Pizzonia, whose erratic form weakened Jaguar's attack, but said Wilson's arrival would not make a lot of difference to him.

"I'm not going to pump up my teammate's tyres," he said. "And I know he's there for himself. I had a lot of respect for Antonio on a lot of fronts but in other areas he struggled.

"I do feel for him because he had a good race in Silverstone, but he should clearly have got points in Magny-Cours and Austria and other places where he was in a great position and didn't. Maybe we could have stayed with him for the rest of the year but that's what they've done and it's done."

Jackie Stewart, who sold his team to Ford in 1999 and became Jaguar's first team boss, said on Wednesday that he might have given Pizzonia more time but Jaguar's current bosses brushed that aside.

"Jackie is a non-executive director of the company and he doesn't have all the data," said managing director David Pitchforth. "I'm pretty sure that if I was to give him chapter and verse he would see it's not that simple."