Lauda pessimistic for Imola

Pedro de la Rosa and Eddie Irvine qualified a season-best 11th and 13th at the Brazilian GP, showing that the outfit had made progress with this year's R3. But Lauda has warned that Jaguar still has a long way to go before it can be competitive at every race.

"We have made some good progress in recent weeks, but there isn't a significant new development on the Jaguar R3 for Imola," said the triple world champion. "It will be a few weeks before we see a noticeable step forward in aero terms and in the meantime, we will continue to extract the best from the package we have."

But Lauda is more optimistic for the rest of the season. "Our windtunnel is now operational and coupled with Ben Agathangelou's arrival from Renault F1 in three weeks time [as Jaguar's new head of aerodynamics], there is renewed optimism going into the European rounds.

"R3's reliability record speaks for itself and from the progress we made in Brazil, it's clear that there's a lot of untapped potential in this package. Our immediate aim, therefore, is to understand how we can extract more pace from the R3 and this is why the arrival of our own windtunnel is so critical towards achieving this goal quickly."

Both Irvine and de la Rosa echoed Lauda's view for the Imola race on Sunday. Irvine said: "I expect a tough weekend, albeit a positive one in terms of strengthening further our understanding of the R3."

Over the weekend, former team boss Bobby Rahal was critical of his treatment by the team. For the full story click here.