By steve
June 18 2003

Jaguar Racing had a pretty good weekend at the Gilles Villeneuve Circuit in Montreal Canada. Both drivers managed to qualify pretty well, Pizzonia in a respectable 13th and Webber in 6th position. Both drivers were in a position to score points, with a suitable attrition rate and some good driving Pizzonia was out of the race early after a mishap early in the race and it was left to Mark Webber to bring the car home in a point scoring position. He managed 7th position and added two points to his and Jaguars points tally. Pizzonia drove solidly throughout his race but was eventually forced to retired on the second-last lap with brake problems.

Teams comments:

Mark Webber: “Yet again the Jaguar has come home strong today and proved it’s pace against the front runners. I made a good clean start and got through the notorious first corner without any problems. In fact, I was trying to sneak onto the inside of Rubens Barrichello (Ferrari) as we entered turn two but couldn’t pull it off. After that, I was happy with the pace and balance of the car. Our top speeds were quite encouraging but it was hard to maintain the pace through the third sector. Our strategy worked well today and the only real issues I suffered from were brakes and oversteer. The oversteer kicked in after my first stop when we changed the rear tyre only and combined with the excellent worn fronts, I fought oversteer for a few laps. Because of the terrible weather this weekend, we have suffered from limited dry running and given this, the team did an excellent recovery job to help pull-off a 7th place finish today. The direction and approach this team is adopting is paying dividends and as long as we continue to maintain this upward curve, I’m sure more points will follow quite soon.”

Antonio Pizzonia: “A frustrating end to what should have been a good race for me. I made a good start and passed two cars that put me into 11th place before the end of the first lap. Our good work, however, was undone when I collided into the back of Jarno Trulli who was being passed around the outside of Turn 10 by David Coulthard. Jarno braked very suddenly and in the process, I lost the front cone off my car. The immediate pit stop put me one lap down and after that, there was little opportunity to make an impact on the race. Nonetheless, generating race mileage is important for my development and being out there for a race distance was valuable experience for me and valuable data for the team.
We came very close to having both Jaguars finish today but my brakes were completely worn towards the end and I had no choice but to call it a day on the penultimate lap. Team wise, we have learned an incredible amount this weekend and in addition, we have two more championship points to take away with us. A tough weekend but one which ended-up with reward in the end.”

Dr Mark Gillan - Head of Vehicle Performance : “Overall, we have had a difficult weekend, particularly with the weather conditions which hampered our preparation, albeit the two-hour Friday testing session helped considerably in compensating for this. Achieving reliability was the target we set ourselves and we are very pleased to have scored points at what is regarded by everyone as a ‘car breaker’ circuit. Only nine cars finished the race and while we suffered some niggles like brakes, for example, we are very satisfied with the speed and balance of the car .
Mark’s race went pretty much according to plan today. He made a good start and maintained position very well. His first pit-stop was compromised slightly by a fuel hose problem but apart from that, Mark’s day went according to plan. Like everyone today, we suffered from the punishment the brakes take and towards the end of the race, Mark backed off a little in an effort to preserve the car and bring it home in a pleasing 7th place. Antonio also made an excellent start and made up a couple of places before a coming together with the Renault of Jarno Trulli. “

“This caused severe damage to his front nose cone and we had no choice but to call him in and put a new nose on the car. We topped him up with fuel, made an adjustment to the strategy and sent him back out, albeit his brakes suffered so much that he had no choice but to retire one lap from the end. We do, however, walk away from the weekend with more championship points, an awful lot of information and achievement in certain target areas that will now allow us to progress onto the next stage of development with the Jaguar R4. We still have a long way to go before we challenge the front runners on a regular basis but the fact that we continue to take positive steps forward on all fronts is key.”