Irvine takes the lead on safety drive

The next he chooses the run-up to Sunday's United States Grand Prix - a potentially explosive sales platform for Jaguar's parent company Ford - to criticise current safety standards in Formula One and the limited ambitions of his own team to boot.

Twelve days ago a marshal was killed when he was hit by a flying wheel during the Italian Grand Prix at Monza.

The three-car crash in which the wheel came off remarkably resulted in no driver casualties, but similarities in course design have prompted concern about the safety of the breakneck first turn at the new Formula One track laid at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

Irvine believes the wheel issue is more important than the safety of any corner.

He stated: "Wheels shouldn't be flying off Formula One cars. They are the issue. There has to be something wrong when that's happening. It's dangerous, and it's been happening all year. Something has to be done about it. Sure it'll happen now, but it's too late for one guy in Italy.

"A pre-emptive strike on safety would be nice every now and again. Wheels have been falling off forever, so they came up with tethers and the wheels kept falling off. So we get stronger tethers and the wheels are still coming off. We've been on the Moon. Surely we can get a wheel to stay on a bloody car?

"I just feel sorry for the guy's family in Italy because we could not come up with a solution." Ferrari's Rubens Barrichello, one of the three drivers involved in the fatal Monza crash, laid the blame squarely at the door of Jordan's Heinz-Harald Frentzen, who braked late and went into the back of the Brazilian.

Barrichello was so incensed that he demanded Frentzen be banned for 10 races.

Irvine said: "Barrichello threw a lot of mud around after the incident which wasn't necessary.

"We've all done it, braked that little bit too late and run into the back of someone.

"It's easily done. It doesn't get us anywhere to fire muck at Heinz-Harald. The issue was the wheel falling off, and if that had not happened everyone would have been happy enough."

Irvine has not had the most fruitful of seasons, and a feeling has grown that his Jaguar masters are less than delirious with the effort he has put in during the opening year of his three-season contract with the team. Yesterday he did little to improve matters by denouncing his own team in front of two of its most senior executives.

The occasion was meant to be a positive one, as Jaguar confirmed the ill-kept secret of CART's Bobby Rahal's appointment as the team's new chief executive.

But Rahal and Jaguar chairman Neil Ressler looked distinctly wintry as Irvine publicly slated the team for merely tinkering with last year's car this season, rather than delivering a whole new design like other teams who made big improvements as a result.

Irvine announced: "All we did was modify last year's car, when it needed a complete rethink. I always thought so anyway.

"We just kept modifying, and eventually you hit the wall at the end of the street. That's what we did. We have to go back, figure out what was wrong with the car and then go down another street."