Pedro aims for Big Cat consistency

The Spaniard picked up his second helping of points when he finished fifth at the Italian Grand Prix two weeks ago, to add to his growing reputation inside the Ford-owned team - he has outqualified team leader Eddie Irvine for four races in succession.

But to score at Indianapolis, Jaguar must be strong in both qualifying and the race, he said, at a circuit where the competitiveness of the R2 was by no means certain.

"It happened at Monza because we finally put things together all weekend," said de la Rosa. "A good performance from Friday to Saturday and Sunday. Our weakest point was that on the previous races we were quick on Saturday, maybe, and then not quick in the race. And when we qualified badly we were then quick in the race.

"Basically in Monza we put together a strong performance, from a team point of view. The strategy was very good and it was very good from driving point of view too."

Getting into the points in Sunday's race will very much depend on how the drivers and engineers cope with the challenge of setting up the car for a circuit which has super-slow and super-fast sections of track.

"There are several things we have to improve - not only in the high downforce sections," continued de la Rosa. "We don't know how competitive we will be here because it's such an unusual circuit.

"There is the low downforce, high speed section. But then you need to be quick on the very tight corners with no downforce on the car. So we'll see how we adapt to this very particular circuit.

"It's a good racing track because it has a very long straight, so overtaking is not very difficult."

Jaguar has scored seven points this season, with de la Rosa sixth in Canada and fifth in Italy, but the rest came from Irvine's podium finish at Monaco in May.