A long and difficult weekend for Jaguar.

A disappointing British Grand Prix saw Jaguar Racing drivers Eddie Irvine and Pedro de la Rosa retire and finish in 11th place respectively.

Irvine started the race from 18th place on the grid and made up five places by the end of lap one. The infamous Silverstone weather, however, once again came into play and no sooner had the race started and the heavens opened with rain.

The showers remained light until around lap 13 when the drizzle turned into heavy showers, forcing everyone into the pits for a tyre change. Irvine pitted for full wet tyres on lap 13 and Pedro de la Rosa followed on lap 14. Irvine's race, however, didn't last long and on lap 23 he lost grip on the exit of Stowe corner and retired.

"I am disappointed to have retired from our home race, but the conditions were very tricky out there," said Irv. "I made a good start and it was actually great fun until I retired. The British fans were not exactly short of overtaking manoeuvres today [Sunday] and having passed five cars by lap one, I was caught in the middle of a procession of cars and it was quite good to be jostling around with everyone being so bunched up."

"The rain, however, got worse and after about fourteen laps we had no choice but to pit and take the full wet tyre option. The grip level on the track was far from ideal and on lap 23 I lost grip coming out of Stowe. The car spun completely off the track and buried itself in the gravel trap. Not the way to leave your mark on your home race, but with only eleven cars finishing the race, it isn't hard to appreciate the challenges that everyone was faced with. Some got lucky, some didn't!"

Team-mate Pedro de la Rosa meanwhile did a good job to keep the car on the track under difficult conditions and finished the British Grand Prix in 11th place.

"Given that we started the race from the back of the grid, we had no option but to take a gamble on the strategy. We could either have gone for the dry tyre or the full wet and once the rain came down, we took the full wet option," commented the Spaniard. "Two laps after my pitstop, however, I started losing grip and with hindsight, maybe we should have gone for the intermediate tyre."

"Nonetheless, we did our best and given the very unpredictable conditions out there, everyone took a gamble of sorts. Ours didn't pay dividends in terms of points, but after having done a full race distance with the new package, we have a good data bank of information to take away and analyse before the French Grand Prix."

Niki Lauda - CEO and Team Principal - concluded: "It's been a long and difficult weekend for us. We have learned a great deal about our new package and quite simply, we still have a fair way to go before we are satisfied. As I said Saturday, we came here with a very limited understanding of how this new aero package would work because of the fact that we only tested it for the first time last Thursday."

"There are some positive steps relative to the previous car, but we also have some issues to address. We will examine carefully the data from today's [Sunday's] race and combined with next week's Monza test, we will aim to understand how best to correct the issues at hand. The race presented everyone with challenging conditions and Pedro did very well indeed to cross the finishing line in 11th place."

Jaguar will begin the three-day test at Monza on Wednesday.