"I feel we are travelling to Brazil having already made progress," says an up-beat Jarno Trulli after two day’s testing in Silverstone. His thoughts are echoed by Jordan’s Technical Director Mike Gascoyne. "We have definitely made progress on the car," he says. "Now we need to deliver on the track."

The Benson and Hedges Jordan team proved in Melbourne that it has a competitive package. "The most important thing for us in Melbourne was to see how competitive we were," says Trulli. "We wanted to confirm that we are third fastest on the grid and we certainly had the feeling over the weekend that we are the only team at the moment able to catch Ferrari and McLaren." Gascoyne agrees but adds that in order to compete with the top two teams Jordan needs a trouble free weekend in Brazil. "We need to work on the car throughout Friday and Saturday, which we were not able to do in Melbourne because of reliability problems. Brazil will be difficult - it is hot, the track is bumpy, the cars have not come home since Melbourne which makes them harder to turn around, the garages are small and so on. Overall it is quite a trying weekend, but we hope things will run more smoothly than in Melbourne and that both drivers will have time to work on their set up."

"The problems we had at the Australian Grand Prix turned out to be reasonably trivial which is very frustrating," continues Gascoyne, "but ultimately it is good to know the problems are not insurmountable. Since then Jarno enjoyed two trouble free days testing at Silverstone where he completed lots of long runs as well as simulated pit stops to look at the car’s reliability. He put 900 kilometres on the clock, and that, plus the fact he found a much better balance on the car than he was able to find during winter testing, means he feels very bouyed up. That feeling has rubbed off onto the team."

Trulli certainly left Silverstone with an added spring in his step. "I feel more confident in the car after the test. I feel we can be more competitive than in Australia and I am looking forward to the weekend. I want to see if we really did improve the car - it certainly felt like we did! We lost a very good chance in Australia but I think we can perform well through the season."

Commenting further on his first race for Jordan Trulli added, "My first race weekend was very good despite the fact I did not finish the race. The atmosphere was very good, and I felt I worked very well with my engineers and mechanics and with my team mate, Heinz. We had a good result in qualifying and the expectations were high for the race as we saw how competitive we were compared with Ferrari and McLaren. It was very unfortunate not to finish the race but we demonstrated that we can be up at the front."

"I think I showed in Melbourne that I am able to do a good job. The pressure is certainly on me and on the team, but I trust in myself and I am very motivated which makes things easier for me and I do not think I will have any problems during the season as far as coping with the pressure goes. This is my best chance to get close to the top two teams. We are much closer compared to last season to Ferrari and McLaren and it is very encouraging to see that we are performing much better than the teams below us." Testing at Silverstone concentrated on new parts developed in Jordan’s wind tunnel, long reliability runs and on set up for Brazil.

Trulli tested alone since his team mate, Heinz-Harald Frentzen stayed at home with his wife Tanja who is expecting the couple’s first child. Commenting from his home in Monaco Frentzen said, "The season will start for Jordan in Brazil. Australia was very disappointing for us and I am looking forward to putting things right at Interlagos. I enjoy the circuit and we have seen some good races there in the past with good over-taking manoeuvres. Last year was good for us in Brazil and it would be great to repeat that performance."