drivers
...ing.He smiles and then laughs.”I’m having a very nice time this year,apart from the results-there’s no rush,”he says continuing to be evasive.Time to try something different.How about the rumour going around the paddock that he has done his own three year deal with Ford,direct with chairman and family scion Bill Ford himself.Irvine counters that one well.”You must stop talking with lunatics,”he says immediately to the journalist.”It’s bollocks,complete and utter bollocks.Who said that?Somebody obviously not on the inside”. For a man coming off the most disappointing season of his lengthy career,Irvine is still hungry.And as he proved at Spa,he can still get the job done when he has reasonable equipment beneath him.But even he admits that 2002 has been tough when it comes to maintaining his motivation.He’s has some bright moments,such as qualifying eighth at Spa, and finishing sixth there,but mostly it has low points. “I work very well with Guenther,”he says,referring to Jaguar Racing’s technical director Guenther Steiner,who joined earlier this year from Ford’s rally team.”I think he’s the best thing to happen to this team,because of his approach to the job.He’s professional,he’s logical,he’s organized,looks at things in depth,pays attention to detail…all of which was missing before.He’s given people confidence in themselves”. Comparisons,of course,are odious.But Jaguar will forever be compared to Ferrari,not just because of the depth of their respective competition histories but also because of former Ford head honcho Jacques Nasser’s wish to see a Jaguar sea of green stemming Ferrari’s red tide.It’s funny how such things can keep coming back to hunt an enterprise.When Jaguar came into Formula One,at Melbourne in 2000,the corporate guys outnumbered the race team personnel.But though that created a bad first impression,Irvine is surprisingly defensive about something that observers saw as a negative. They do indeed,w...