Pizzonia keeps his seat

[Wrex]

From ITV-F1.com

Antonio Pizzonia will stay at Jaguar until the end of the season, the team has confirmed.

Managing director David Pitchforth confirmed that the Brazilian rookie would see out the rest of the year after Jaguar abandoned efforts to lure McLaren tester Alex Wurz.

Pitchforth said: "It's all been a bit of a storm in a teacup really."

Pizzonia said that he had been informed of the team’s decision on Saturday night.

He said: "I'm okay now until the end of this season.


"They told me yesterday and basically they said that they had made a mistake and let's carry on and make progress."

Pizzonia was under pressure after a disappointing start to the season. Jaguar sounded out Wurz with a view to the Austrian taking over next race but negotiations hit a stumbling block when McLaren demanded compensation to release him from his contract.

Pizzonia’s run of bad luck continued in Spain. His race ended almost before it had begun when he suffered a launch control failure and was smashed from behind by Kimi Raikkonen’s McLaren.

Jaguar had hoped to move Pizzonia into a testing role but the Brazilian’s manager Jaime Brito said on Saturday that he would not accept such a demotion. Brito said his client would rather move elsewhere than stay with a team that had no faith in his ability.

Not sure how concrete this really is, but I think it's fair. He know has 11 more chances to show he's worthy of a 2004 drive.