JANUARY 18, 2004

The new Jaguar R5

Jaguar Racing launched their new contender for the 2004 Formula 1 season at Barcelona on Sunday morning. The car is an evolution of last year's R4 with the problem areas having been redesigned and a great deal of work going into vehicle dynamics and reliability work. The team spent much of last year rebuilding its technical organization and the fruit of that work will be seen with the new car. The new car was shaken down last week at the Ford test track at Lommel in Belgium and will now begin an intensive series of tests before the start of the new season in six weeks from now.

The team's commercial package has changed a little with the appearance of Red Bull-backed Christian Klien. The car features branding from Dietrich Mateschitz's Flying Bulls aviation team, rather than from Red Bull itself. The Flying Bulls run a fleet of historic aircraft from its headquarters in Salzburg where Mateschitz had built a $25m hangar to house the planes.

HSBC has altered its logos to be more striking while DuPont appears to have upped its support for the team. EDS has changed its backing to UGS PLM backing while Hewlett-Packard has gone (the company being heavily involved with rival Williams), Pioneer and Castrol seem to have increased their support while AT&T had less signage than in 2003.