Mark Webber

Just a few weeks ago Mark Webber qualified on the front row in Malaysia, beaten only by Michael Schumacher. At that stage it seemed that Jaguar might be as strong a force as BAR this year, but the unfortunate Aussie bogged down at the start, and his chance was wasted.

Since then very little has gone right for him or the team. He managed eighth and a point in Bahrain, but at Imola he trailed round to a troubled 13th, hampered by an engine problem. It's no the sort of performance we expected after Australia, where Mark was in touch with the frontrunners before he retired.

"It's a bit frustrating, but it's very tough at the front now, that's the thing," says Mark. "Three or four years ago you could run all the way to the finish and get points You can't do it these days. There's no attrition, and the level is very, very high. Having slipped up in the first few races, when we had the pace, that was frustrating.

"But this is where I expected us to be, actually, to be honest. You've got to have full respect for the opposition, and you've got to be careful with your goals. If you get too optimistic then you're going to beat yourself up a bit."

In other words the front row qualifying spot at Sepang created expectations that have not been fulfilled.

"It did, yeah. We were strong there, and we've had the same car from Melbourne to here."

The new car was clearly not too bad at the start of the season, but the big danger is that Jaguar will get left behind to an even greater extent as the opposition gets its act together and makes progress.

"Well, we're not on the pace at the moment. We need to work harder. That happened last year, because we were focussing on the R5. Hopefully we can keep the R5 going quite competitive all the way until we start on the R6. But it's a fine line, how much you want to focus on the short term. When it comes to the last five or six races you can lose a lot there, or you can gain a lot if you stay on it."

Reliability continues to be the team's weakness. In Imola it was an engine problem that struck Webber, and while he made it to the flag, he was severely hampered. The fact that he was mixing it with the Renaults in the early laps shows that there were points to be had that day.

"The start wasn't too bad, and I managed to get Fernando (Alonso) when he got tagged. I was having a battle with Jarno (Trulli) on the first sector of the first lap, and I just couldn't find enough room to get in there. We were going along well. I think we could have trucked on and maybe got a point at the end of it if we'd had a really good afternoon. On lap 14 we lost a cylinder on the engine. In the last 45 laps 30 of them were with eight and a half cylinders! It was intermittent. Sometimes it would give me a bit power, and sometimes it wouldn't."

Back in Malaysia Webber made a point of seeking out Jenson Button and congratulating him on his third place. He's genuinely pleased to see BAR mix it with the established frontrunners.

"I am surprised, but I'm happy for them. This is a sport where hard work, sensible decisions, good communications, those sorts of things are rewarded. Clearly there are a lot of teams that aren't performing as they should be. BAR are taking absolute full advantage of that. Even if those other teams were performing well, BAR would be right in there with them.

"Thank God BAR are doing what they're doing, because it would be all over, and it would look a bit embarrassing! I'm happy for Jenson. He's worked hard. You can't knock that. It's not easy to do what they've done, so that's why you've got to take your hat off to them."

So what of Barcelona? Much depends on tyres of course, and it remains to be seen how the R5 will perform.

"Well, we had a pretty good test there, we went OK," says Mark. "It hasn't been one of our strongest circuits in the past, to be honest. You need big power, big efficiency, good aero. It's a really, really hard track on everything. There are a lot of fast corners, which is not a bad thing for us, and we were pretty good in Malaysia. We'll see what happens, what the weather's like, and how the tyre war goes."