Wednesday September 29th, 1999

Eddie Irvine remains optimistic albeit the disastrous weekend he and Ferrari experienced at the Nurburgring. In his regular post-race column, the Ulsterman claims: "the title is still up for grabs."

Irvine also seems forgiving towards his team, not pointing out who is to blame and placing the mishaps on "circumstances." "That was the worst day we have had at Ferrari for a long time, with too many mistakes for our own good. But if anyone thinks the knives are out and we are in disarray, they can forget it. Mika Hakkinen might be crowing about the two points he got, but the fact is that on a day when we were on a low, that was as much as he and McLaren could collect.

"We made the biggest step forward in performance before the Nurburgring but circumstances, mainly the weather, did not allow us to show that improvement. There is more work ahead before leaving for Kuala Lumpur and we will all work as hard as we have all year. We were a bit sick after the race, but this is not the time for back-biting and there won't be any, just an analysis of what went wrong and how we can improve. We know we were lucky to escape on Sunday and we must not stumble in the remaining races."