Jaguar Sign Two New Aerodynamicists

The Jaguar team announced on Monday the arrival of two new aerodynamicists â€" Mark Gillan and Peter Machin - who will help the Milton Keynes squad try to solve the problems of their R3 chassis.

Team boss Niki Lauda said that Ben Agathangelou, Jaguar's new head of aerodynamics, will start working at their new Bicester wind tunnel next week, and that he will be joined by Gillan - former aerodynamicist for McLaren - and Machin - who used to work for the Arrows team.

"Windtunnel work is extremely scientific in nature and the results from this meticulous work take time to generate," said Lauda. "Our new head of aerodynamics starts next week and in addition, we will have two new aerodynamicists joining us within the next fortnight.

"Dr Mark Gillan will be joining us from McLaren International and Peter Machin will join us from Arrows. Both men will bring with them a new and experienced technical dimension to Jaguar Racing that will help accelerate our development path."

Jaguar have struggled with their Cosworth-powered R3 chassis so far this year despite scoring three points at the season opening Australian Grand Prix.

Lauda has again claimed that until his team can solve the serious aerodynamic problems with the new car, they will continue to struggle, and he is not confident of improving at this weekend's Spanish Grand Prix.

"It[Barcelona]'s an outright aero circuit and until we have solved the aerodynamic issues on the Jaguar R3, we will unfortunately struggle on tracks like this," Lauda added. "We are pushing forward on the aerodynamic development of R3 and until we find the answers that we're looking for, we have little choice but to extract the best from the package we have.

"I don't mean to sound downbeat or pessimistic â€" just realistic. The only way we are going to take a major step forward this season will be through significant aerodynamic improvements."