Jacques blasts Button at launch.

Jacques Villeneuve has been at his old tricks again at the launch of the BAR 005 yesterday claiming that his new team-mate Jenson Button will only be good enough to carry BAR forward if the Briton raises his game.

Villeneuve has a reputation for playing mind games, despite the French Canadian's claim on the day that he doesn't plan to out psyche his team-mates.

Button comes to the team with three seasons' experience having started his F1 career with WilliamsF1 and spent these past two seasons with Benetton and then Renault (same team, different name).

In comparison Jacques Villeneuve came into F1 as the reigning CART champion and started his F1 career as team-mate to Damon Hill in Damon's championship winning year of 1996. Since then Villeneuve suffered the downturn in Williams form as they lost the works Renault deal and then jumped to the bespoke British American Racing team, built around him by friend and mentor Craig Pollock.

Despite the boasts when they entered F1 and the British American Tobacco budget at their disposal, BAR has yet to win a race, and last year Button at Renault scored ten more points in the championship than Villeneuve did; fourteen against four.

"I will respect Jenson when he goes fast on the race track because that is the only way you respect another driver," Villeneuve, as reported in Britain's The Daily Telegraph, said at the launch of the new car they will both be driving in 2003. Despite Villeneuve making the comments at the launch of the new car and new livery - traditionally a time for drivers to speak optimistically of the year ahead and hoping for a good relationship with their new team-mate - Villeneuve insisted he wasn't trying to out-psyche Button.

"I don't set out to psyche-out a team-mate, I just go out and drive as hard as I can. The key is do you respect your team-mate or not? If you do, then everything is fine and nobody gets destroyed. If you don't, then it happens on its own."

Despite his undoubted talent and the fact that BAR was built around Villeneuve it will be Button that gets the first drive of the new car. Villeneuve was asked if he thought that Button was the right man to take BAR forward.

"If he steps things up from his first three years then yes. If not, no."