Irvine plans more fireworks

Eddie Irvine will be hoping his reception at the end of Sunday's German Grand Prix is a little more glorious than that which awaited him in London after his victory at the Austrian Grand Prix last weekend.

The Ulsterman, going into his second race as Ferrari number one, chose to fly to England to celebrate his win but on arrival found a cold, quiet and, more disastrously dry, welcome awaiting him.

"Going to London was the worst thing I've ever done after a race," he said.

"The place was shut at 10.30 p.m. We ended up eating a chinese and they couldn't even serve us a beer. We ended up having to have coke because we were outside licensing hours. So I won't be going back there after another victory, I can tell you that.

"Mind you, we had a good celebration on the plane on the way but we came down to earth truly when we arrived in London."

While Irvine's celebrations last week turned out to be a damp squib, the Ferrari driver will be hoping to continue the championship fireworks he lit with that win at the A1-Ring. Irvine is now just two points adrift of Mika Hakkinen's championship lead but Hockenheim, with its long, long straights is a different animal to the slow twists and turns of Spielberg and with power at a premium, the Ulsterman may find his Ferrari still lacking the firepower necessary to stage a championship coup deep inside Mercedes' lines, a short distance from the engine suppliers' home in Stuttgart.

"We're certainly more on course (for the title) than we were before last weekend," Irvine said. "We were eight points behind Mika, now it's two. It's better but Mika's still the favourite. He has been consistently faster than us all year but we have beaten him on a few occasions. We need to step up a gear. We need to start going faster to really be in with a chance and that's what we're working on."

In Spielberg, Irvine was fortunately spared the attentions of Hakkinen after the Finn was shunted off the circuit by teammate David Coulthard. Coulthard later apologised for the error, but the accident was believed to have put his status at McLaren in jeopardy, even after the Scot had appeared to rescue his drive with a win at Silverstone last month.

However, yesterday, Mercedes motorsport director Norbert Haug defended the number two, saying that Coulthard's position remained unchanged.

"The situation is completely unchanged," said Haug. "The good thing is we sorted it out after the race. David came in to the motorhome followed by Ron (Dennis) and Mika and it was Mika who spoke first to say `forget it. It was a mistake. Let's go outside the media is waiting.' They shook hands and that was it."

Despite the vote of confidence and rumours that suggest that McLaren are about to announce a new three-year contract for the Scot, Haug added an ominous rider to his support.

"David has never made a mistake like that in 60 races with Mika as his team-mate. That was the first time but if that was to happen on a regular basis my view would be different," he said. One mistake is okay. It should not have happened but every downside has an upside and I think the world championship is exciting for everybody."

Irvine's future is equally cloudy. With rumours of apparently strained relations between the driver and Ferrari sporting director Jean Todt being given a boost by the Frenchman's non-appearance on the podium last week, gossip linking Irvine with a £6.25 million switch to Stewart refusing to die, and the re-emergence of stories placing him at McLaren in 2000, the Ulsterman's seat at Ferrari looks as insecure as ever. Yesterday, Irvine was refusing to give anything away.

"We'll just have to wait and see (about next year)," he said. "It's not something I'm really thinking about. I'm pretty much leaving it to Enrico, my manager, who knows what I want to do and I'm leaving him to get on with it so I want to concentrate on getting the results that are required for this year."

Irvine was also at pains to point put that the appearance of technical director Ross Brawn at last week's podium ceremony instead of Todt, the usual co-celebrant, was no more than team diplomacy. "Jean decided after the last win, I can't remember where it was, that Ross would go up next time and the winning engineer the time after, so whoever wins, either myself or Mika (Salo), it will be either my engineer or Mika's. The story about Jean and me wasn't true, but it was a great story."