Webber plays down Jag woes

The Australian, who enjoyed an excellent first season with the team in 2003, believes that the media has overplayed early niggles with the R5 chassis. The new car has yet to make an appearance near the top of the testing times so far in 2004.

"I think the problems have been fuelled up in the press more than what we know about," said Webber. "The press know a lot more than we do at the moment, which is interesting, but we're going along pretty well. The tests in Jerez next week and also in Valencia the week after will be very, very important for us.

"We've got two new cars down there, and they will be all set for Melbourne. It's progressing along pretty well. We've got issues, which every team has at this stage of the year. The Australian Grand Prix date is always one that comes along very, very quickly, but everyone in the factory is confident at this stage."

When pressed on the subject of what issues the team is facing, Webber replied: "Issues we've got: clearly just not enough mileage. You want to get as much mileage on the car as possible, and we've just had a few snags which have caught us out and they're just small things: Installation, pipeage, a few things with brakes and stuff which stops you putting long runs on the car. That's the thing that you would like to be able to do.

"We had a good last day in Valencia [at the end of January] with the car, a lot of those issues were addressed, but we need to build more confidence with that, which I'm sure we can do in Jerez. You can't run these cars half pregnant, they've got to be fully pregnant before we can run them properly or they don't work. So we're looking forward to the next few tests."