Following three years of disastrous results, the Jaguar Racing team are aiming to get things back on track this season. Last Sunday's Brazilian Grand Prix showed that, at last, the Milton Keynes outfit could be getting to grips with Formula One, but just in case, they are still refusing to get carried away. Atlas F1's Will Gray talked to Jaguar's "public face" and new sporting director John Hogan on their ambitions for the 2003 season

Pending the FIA's decision to review the Brazilian Grand Prix result, it looks like Jaguar Racing finally scored their first points of the season even though their drivers, Mark Webber and Antonio Pizzonia, have yet to drive past the chequered flag this year. That after Webber had set the fastest time in Friday's qualifying and an impressive third on Saturday. Maybe, after three full seasons of misery, their luck is finally changing.

Australian Webber may have claimed seventh place for the Milton Keynes-based team at Interlagos, but he did so after crashing out and seeing the results go in his favour when the wet race was stopped after rival Fernando Alonso crashed into debris left by his stricken car. The only other classified finish for Jaguar so far came in Australia, when Pizzonia claimed a rather disappointing 13th place on his debut. But that result came after the Brazilian rookie lost control of his new R4 and crashed out six laps from the end.

John Hogan, the team's new sporting director, has watched with interest during his month with Jaguar following his appointment to the newly-created position on the eve of the 2003 season. He believes that despite six effective retirements, the team are going places. So where does he get his confidence from?

"We've got two young hungry drivers and a hungry team," explained Australian Hogan, a former Formula One sponsorship manager for Marlboro. "Time will tell where we will be at the end of the season but I think in Brazil we've shown we can make some progress.

"I've been here for about a month so I can't take any credit but you have got to look at the job the engineers and the drivers have done throughout the winter. It is important that the team can show what we are capable of doing this season and we want to continually make progress.

"If we can maintain this sort of performance for the rest of the year that will be good. We are a team still learning, still adapting to the changes of the winter, but our performance is getting better and better at every race and we are learning from the problems we have had in the races as well."

Webber certainly put Jaguar firmly in the news on Sunday with a horrific crash which left his R4 machine looking more like a toboggan than a racing car. But it was his performances in the preceding days at Interlagos that will really stick in Hogan's mind.

The likeable Australian stunned the field by shooting to the top of the timesheets in Friday's qualifying session, taking advantage of the drying conditions to claim some glory for the Milton Keynes squad and he followed that up with an impressive third in the grid-deciding session the following day.

This season is set to be a coming of age for the Australian, 26, who shone in his debut year with Minardi last year - albeit still at the back of the grid - and who has been tipped for big things by current and past bosses alike. Hogan believes that if the team can provide the equipment to challenge at the front he will makes sure it gets there.

"Mark did a fantastic job all weekend," said Hogan. "He did a great job qualifying in the wet and the dry and it showed that we are heading in the right direction. That was very pleasing and he didn't get as much credit as maybe he should have done. He is such a smooth driver that he tends to get the best out of the car and he is getting better and better with every lap he drives. I honestly believe that. He is a typical Australian - he just gets his head down and gets on with the job.

"He had a good year with Minardi last year in what you could say was not the best car on the grid and he has done very well with Jaguar in the three races so far. People have got to remember it is only his second year in Formula One. He gets through the work that needs doing and does what is required."

That is exactly what everyone at Jaguar must do in what is a bedding-in year for all concerned. Owners Ford cannot afford the publicity of yet another re-structuring at the team and if that need becomes apparent it is unlikely the green cars will continue to grace the grid with their presence.

But the team have done their best to ensure they go about their business quietly, slowly developing and strengthening while new team chief Dave Pitchforth and the new boss of Ford's Premier Performance Division, Tony Purnell, steer it in the right direction. Huge changes in the structure of the team have given everyone a confidence boost.

"Everything is going well," a team insider said. "It was a great result for us on Sunday and there really is the feeling now that things are finally heading in the right direction."

The new wind tunnel, the lack of which former team principal Niki Lauda placed squarely as an excuse for the terrible performance of the R3 car last year, is now on stream and working for as many hours as the engineers that run it can possibly keep their eyes open. That alone will be a big boost for the team.

Pitchforth and Purnell, who were both involved in running Ford's very successful Pi Research company before being transferred to Jaguar Racing, are not high-profile and they are not thrusting their names forward into the limelight. But that is just what Jaguar need.

Their selection of Hogan for the role of sporting director, a new role created in an effort to avoid the high-profile position of team principal, was similarly low key. They chose him above a list of luminaries including former Formula One driver Alex Zanardi. And they chose him because he is quiet.

Hogan, a very experienced paddock patroller, has remained in the shadows since his Jaguar appointment. He has appeared in one FIA press conference as the official face of the team, but that was merely as an introduction to the media and his responses to questions were markedly controlled.

There are no targets, no aims and ambitions, no hopes and no expectations - at least, none that are going to be made public. Jaguar have learned lessons. Their astonishing staff turn-around may leave few who remember life at the slumbering animal as it prepared to pounce in 2000. But the legends remain.

Now, in a complete reverse to abrupt former figurehead Lauda, the men from Milton Keynes are keeping their names out of the press, concentrating on the job and nurturing what deep down, from the reception to the racetrack, is a young ambitious team of the future. The introduction of Brazilian young gun Pizzonia, who according to insiders was the team's first choice driver for this year and whose place was virtually secured mid-way through last season, makes a statement about Jaguar's trust in youth.

Pizzonia, 22, first got his appetite for racing in the streets of Manaus, racing in car-parks around straw bales and cones. He may have struggled so far this season, but his youthful passion marks him out as someone who fits well with the desires of Jaguar's life-experienced hierarchy.

Rumour has it that Jaguar have already been approached by several experienced drivers following Pizzonia's somewhat erratic start to the season. But a change, at this time, would be a disaster. Hogan, for one, believes that his Jaguar is now fuelled by the right kind of diet.

"Antonio is much more of an aggressive driver," he said. "He tends to wring the neck of the car a bit more, while Mark is much more smoother, but they both methodically work through the work. They work as a team. Neither is really the team leader, they just get on with the work together.

"I would like to say we can finish fifth rather than sixth, or sixth rather than seventh, but it is not really about that. It is not about targets, it is about progression. We just want to show we can score points regularly this season and underline what we, as a team, can do. And I think we can do a lot."