Typically, Jaguar's more experienced driver, Eddie Irvine, knew exactly where he felt Jaguar should be aiming for in 2002. "You won't beat the top three," says Eddie Irvine, "but who was fourth. Sauber? We may be two years behind schedule but we should be aiming for fourth."

Team chief Niki Lauda poured a little cold water on his ambitions. "You still go through stepping stones," said Niki. "From one year to the next, you can't expect to move from where we were up into the first two rows. It's impossible." Instead, Lauda admitted that "our target must be to qualify better, because then racing is easier for us. If we can qualify constantly in the first eight, this would be the right step to go. But this only dreaming."

It all sounded so good early in January when Jaguar became the third team to launch its 2002 challenger. Last year's car had two problems: it didn't qualify well and it was unstable mid-corner. Those two areas were to be addressed in the new car, and it was out there on track, with an interim hybrid when testing resumed soon after the launch.

But days later, the team knew that it had problems. The front wing wasn't working as it should, and there were problems with the rear suspension. Instead of spending two months extracting speed from the R3, the team went troubleshooting. Handford went back to Swift's wind tunnel in California and reworked the front wing while the team worked on new rear suspension. Nichols fell on his sword and left the team.

Jaguar was back in the poo again. It was the instability that Jaguar didn't need. Chief designer John Russell admitted that "it's taken me 18 months to get my feet under the table." Handford said that many of last year's car problems were down to "people coming and going. We were very much an unstable group. We struggled a little bit for a number of reasons, which were mostly the legacy of people changes. We're all looking forward to a much more stable environment with the same people, the same faces, and working together. The reality is that there hasn't been that environment in the past."

Part of that was due to the extraordinary pressures on the aerodynamics department, which used the Swift facility in California. "We weren't in the same time zone. It took us 24 hours to get there. We suffered jet lag, 20 hour days working in two shifts. There were logistical nightmares, personal issues."

But all those should disappear now. "We were handicapped because the wind tunnel wasn't next to the factory," admits Lauda. "But now we have our own wind tunnel in Bicester." Handford explains "it's about 24 minutes from the factory, not 24 hours!"

Lauda, meanwhile, has made small changes. "The process of working in the team and in the group was very bad in the beginning, so you really needed to improve the relations within Pi, Cosworth and Jaguar Racing, and there are a lot of relationships improved within Jaguar Racing itself. The people are there, but if you make them communicate in a proper, short way with each other without any emotions evolving in these discussions you improve the whole team."

Lauda admits that being a driver is easier than his new job, while at the same time giving an insight into his new role. "It's easier to be a driver, because all you have to do is complain and drive. My problem now is that I have to deliver something that they (the drivers) can't complain about which is much more hard work. But the more difficult it is, the more I like it because this is the way I am."

So what is his management style, how does he run the team? "With straightforward English Austrian words. We don't have a million meetings and talk and talk and talk. We get on and do something. Time is the issue here and money. My target is to spend less money in less time. Anybody can go slow and spend a lot of money. I get enough pressure from my bosses and I just pass it on."

One advantage will be Michelin's tyres, says Irvine. He says that he still doesn't see "any driver in the same league as Michael (Schumacher). He's still the man to beat, apart from Michelin Man. They (Michelin's tyres) work very well, incredible."

Lauda agrees and believes McLaren's decision to go with Michelin will help Jaguar. "The Williams is a car which basically uses harder tyres than we normally do. Instead, now we have McLaren at the top end and they will develop Michelin's tyres in the direction they chose, which is normally in a softer way."

For chief designer John Russell, this is really his first car with the team. "I set some very demanding targets for the design team," continues Russell, "and almost every single one of them has been reached or surpassed. This is the first real Jaguar from this operation, breaking out of the mould of being a boxy, very regular and mundane car, into something that is having its own individual identity."

All in all, Jaguar Racing should be finally coming of age with its third car. Its new engine won't be seen until the European season at the earliest, but the last year has been about building a team that can take significant steps forwards with confidence and giving the drivers what they need - and so that they don't complain!

So here's another team looking for fourth in the championship. They know they should have spent the last two months refining the car, instead of trying to get the thing to handle, and they know that consequently they are behind. The team's stability has been undermined again and they are desperately trying to catch up. But look at the opposition; they are in just as much disarray - if that's any consolation at all!

Bob Constanduros