Cat has Irvine's tongue wagging

Eddie Irvine admitted yesterday that he is feeling the pressure from Jaguar as the team limps from the debris of a hideous season to a future it hopes will be as bright as the lights that shone down on the 2001 challenger it unveiled. In stark contrast to the pomp and ceremony of last year's car launch, when Formula One debutants Jaguar unveiled their R1 in a showy display at Lord's cricket ground, yesterday's first look at the R2 in a low-key affair at Jaguar's Coventry headquarters was an exercise in restraint, caution and humility.

The humility is the outward face of new team boss Bobby Rahal, who confessed that a team had to be humble enough to accept its shortcomings if it is to move forward. Underneath the Uriah Heepisms, however, lies a Ford-inspired determination not be seen off by Fiat-backed rivals Ferrari or Mercedes-powered adversaries McLaren. It is a steeliness that resulted, at the end of last season, in a bloody night of the long knives. Out went Irish designer and technical director Gary Anderson. In came threetime US ChampCar champion and CART series boss Rahal. In came new technical chief Steve Nichols, formerly of McLaren and Jordan, and in came a listening ear to the complaints Irvine had made all through 2000.

The result, according to Irvine, is a car which incorporates many of the items on the Irish driver's wish list and he admitted yesterday that it is now up to him to make it work.

"At the end of last year I just wrote out a big list of things I wanted to change and Bobby looked at it and we've just been going through that and trying to find ways of tightening the whole thing up," said Irvine.

"Therefore, there is more pressure in that they've done a lot of the things I wanted them to do. That's okay though. There's a whole new atmosphere in the team. New people have joined. They're open to new ideas and I've just been pushing everything as far as I can to get back to where I was (with Ferrari). It will take time but the seeds are there."

Rahal confirmed that Irvine would be expected to lead from the front this year but added that he would be surprised if the forthright driver did not already have that in mind. "Eddie's the leader of the team and you either accept that responsibility or you get out of the way and let the other guy do it," he said. "I don't think that Eddie will let that happen."

While the vote of confidence from Rahal may ease Irvine's mind, his boss's will be racing to find the solution that pushes Jaguar from low-end ingnominy to high-spec competitiveness. Taking just four points last year (three of those from a sterling Irvine drive in Monaco) and finishing with just the hapless Prost and Minardi teams behind them, the cat crawled back to its lair to lick wounds and sharpen claws.

The claws come in the shape of Rahal, who since his appointment has shown, in concert with chairman Neil Ressler, a willingness to excise the unwanted.

The most senior casualty has undoubtedly been designer Gary Anderson, who had presided over Stewart's one and only grand prix win - with Johnny Herbert at the Nurburgring in 1999. Yesterday, Rahal admitted the decision had been difficult, but necessary.

"Gary's a nice guy and it was no fun. Unless you've no feelings at all it's painful to let someone go but you have to do what's best for the group. You can develop relationships with people in racing but at times you have to make a very hard choice. Then, sometimes you just don't have any choice."

Irvine concurred, saying: "Obviously Gary leaving was difficult. He's a very clever guy but you have to look at the way things are going in Formula One and Gary was very much a one-man band. He was doing everything. He was designing the car and he was technical director and he was race engineer. He's an amazing guy but Formula One now is about a group of 20 or 30 people working together to do their best." Anderson's departure paved the way for a the new technical team upon which Jaguar are pinning their 2001 hopes. Rahal is reserving judgment, calling for the team to achieve the goal of "respectability". Irvine too, has been infected with a dose of postmillennial Jaguar realism.

"You've got Williams, Benetton, Jordan, these guys are good. We've no right to be fifth and we'll have to work at it. I want to qualify consistently in the top 10 and race consistently. We're really looking at five to 10. At worst I want to be 10th on the grid but fifth as much as possible. We're looking at trying to finish consistently in the points and maybe we'll grab a lucky podium along the way. It's not going to be easy."