Irvine says fellow drivers are all 'tossers'.

Jaguar driver Eddie Irvine has admitted that none of his fellow grand prix drivers are friends and he is of the opinion that they are all tossers.

Irvine told the British newspaper The Sunday Telegraph: "Sometimes driving can be boring, big-time, and if you are going backwards it can be humiliating. You are in front of 300 million people and you look stupid. But none of the drivers are your mates - my mentality is that they are all tossers, so lets take the piss out of them and upset them if we can. I don't want them as friends. I don't need them as friends."

The outspoken Irishman added: "Every year you hear (David) Coulthard saying, 'I'm going to test them more than ever,' but it's all bollocks."

Irvine continued of his move to Jaguar: "I have no regrets at all. You can't beat Michael in the same car. You have to accept that. It may sound defeatist but there is no point in standing in front of a man who has a gun and pretending he has a knife. The only way you can beat him is in a better car."

"Until I came over I didn't realise how much Ferrari and McLaren had moved on. They have been building for seven or eight years. And people expect us to challenge them in one year. Last season it was frustrating big-time. But now it is not a problem. We are working to make things happen."

He concluded: "When he (Bobby Rahal) came in. I didn't see the urgency in him. We still don't have our own wind tunnel and are massively understaffed technically. But the way Bobby talks and the ways he acts, I see he has a sense of urgency now. If Mark Handford is as good aerodynamically as we think he is, he can shorten the time we win by a lot."

"I learnt so much from my four years with Ferrari. I see a lot of my work in helping to make all this gel. I am very involved. Probably too involved. I can't wait for it to start happening and I can just be a driver again."