Quote Originally Posted by jens View Post
Really for whatever reason points rarely came that year despite them looking promising speed-wise. He often seemed racing in about 7th or 8th and in races without attrition just missed out of points.
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Yeah I remember they had major clutch problems and almost always started badly. This meant whereas Irvine qualified 7th-10th he could be running 10th - 13th in the race, and from there it was just hard to make up enough ground.

For 2001, Jaguar maybe looked slightly less chaotic, but frankly the car was dog slow, Irvine qualifying on average a massive +1.867sec off M.Schumacher. That's half a sec slower than Heidfeld's Sauber!

However in the races, Irvine said the Jaguar was maybe the 4th best car! This was largely unnoticed but looking closely this seems true. They finished 7th and 8th at Nurburgring, Irvine right on Hakkinen's tail. Eddie also missed out thrugh unreliability, which used to eist back then. Looking at all his potential results withut problems, he should have finished about 9th or better every time.

Also unnoticed was that even though Irvine was outqualified 6 times in a row(!) by Pedro de la Rosa mid season, in the entire time as team-mates de la Rosa never finished a race ahead iirc...