Irvine won't test drive for Ferrari

Briton Eddie Irvine says he will not return to Ferrari as a test driver next year, but believes he is in a "fairly good position" for 2003.

Irvine, who has scored just three points for Jaguar this season, is tipped to make way for Australian Mark Webber at the British-based team next year.

He has been linked with a move to Jordan, who gave him his debut in Japan in 1993, because team sponsors Benson and Hedges are believed to be interested in signing a high-profile British driver.

"High profile and British? I wonder who that is," Irvine said of the Jordan speculation on Thursday.

"I don't know. I'm in no rush to do anything, I'm quite happy just plodding along and see what happens."

The Briton almost won the world championship for Ferrari in 1999 when he assumed the role of team leader after German team mate Michael Schumacher's leg-breaking accident at Silverstone.

He missed out on the title by two points to McLaren driver Mika Hakkinen, of Finland, and has had difficult times ever since he moved to Jaguar at the end of that year.

He ruled out a return to the Italian team after being tipped to take a test driver role, however, claiming that driving hundreds of laps around the team's Mugello test centre would be too tough for him to cope with.

"Mugello's hard work," he said. "The idea of driving around Mugello for two or three days...That's not going to happen. That's a joke that made a headline.

"You'd actually need a week of recovery after doing three days hard testing for Ferrari at Mugello."

TOUGH SEASON

The 2002 season has been tough enough for Irvine, who was immediately faced with an ill-handling car the minute he got behind the wheel of the R3 machine in January.

Major revisions, introduced at Magny-Cours for the French Grand Prix in July made an impact, but failed to haul the team up to the position Irvine had hoped.

He does believe, however, that the team have been making strides in the right direction, and said: "Actually, the last three races we've had bloody good races.

"Magny Cours was going well, Hockenheim would have gone better if we hadn't had so many problems with the car, and Budapest, we were a lot quicker than everyone else apart from the really big guys but the car broke down.

"We've definitely made progress."