Jaguar wins court injunction over Newey.

Jaguar Racing is claiming a minor victory in the battle to land Adrian Newey as its technical director from 2002.

The Milton Keynes team is embroiled in an ongoing struggle with Newey's current employer, McLaren, over claims that it has a valid contract for his services from August next year. Both teams announced late last week that the aerodynamics expert had signed to work for them - and the saga looks likely to end up in the courts.

Jaguar announced in Canada last night that it had secured a High Court injunction in London that would prevent McLaren and Newey from working together after the end of July 2002 - and team principal Bobby Rahal told the FIA press conference at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal that the situation was far from over.

"Jaguar Racing this afternoon obtained an injunction at the High Court in London on behalf of Ford Motor Company and Jaguar Racing Limited against McLaren International Limited," read the team's statement, "The terms of this injunction restrain McLaren International from entering into or continuing any contract of employment with Adrian Newey post 31 July 2002."

"The situation is now different from what was reported the other day," Rahal told the assembled media, "Naturally, our legal team is pursuing all options at this stage. We have a Queen's Counsel that has declared it a binding commitment, and so we feel we have a contract of sorts - whatever the terminology that you want to use, it's legally binding. I guess we probably we haven't seen the end of this story for some time. Stay tuned."

The American then referred back to a meeting between the various team bosses in which McLaren head Ron Dennis had apparently spoken in favour of contract recognition - and against the very situation he seemingly finds himself involved in.

"We talked about it in Austria," Rahal pointed out, "There's an interesting quote here from Ron. Basically he said 'It does not matter how big a company is, or whether it's an employer or an employee. When you enter in a contract agreement, or an agreement that is effectively a contract, they should honour it unless the parties agree to end it or change it. Those are the only circumstances in which it is correct'. And I really couldn't agree more with that, as you might imagine. I certainly think Ron said it best."

McLaren countered with a statement of its own, pointing out several inaccuracies in Jaguar's case and claiming that both team and designer just wished to get on with the business of racing.