Sauber hasn't asked for Ant, says BAR.

BAR technical director Geoff Willis has confirmed that the Brackley-based team has not been approached with regard to the availability of test driver Anthony Davidson.

Although the Brit has been linked to Sauber, as a possible replacement for Jacques Villeneuve following the Canadian's dismal display in Australia, Willis added that, while BAR would release him for this season, it would not let him sign a contract for period longer than that, as they have yet to make a decision on their 2006 driver line-up.

"[The situation is] very much the same as have been the discussions we had last year with the possibility of Anthony driving for one or two teams," re-stated Willis.

"Anthony is a BAR driver at the moment. We don't have our driver decisions made for 2006 and, therefore, if we had any discussion with Anthony driving for another team this year, it would only be on the grounds that it would be for a single year and I think that that's our position.

"But I would say that we have had no contact whatsoever, so you are probably better informed than we are."

Willis and Renault engineering director Pat Symonds, meanwhile, were both quick to defend Villeneuve, who has come under heavy criticism following his performance in Melbourne.

"When Jacques came to our team, I didn't know him terribly well," Symonds noted, "I'd spoken to him a few times, but I didn't know him terribly well and a lot of my opinion of him, I think, was formed by what I had read about him. I found a very different character."

"He certainly has a reputation of being very laid-back and he's not laid-back. He actually works quite hard and he has a lot of interest in the car and what's going on. During the race, he's very good. He's on the radio all the time, talking through the race, talking to his engineer. There are a lot of very, very positive points about him as a driver, and I can understand how he won the world championship.

"He suffered a lot with us, I think, because the rate of progress in Formula One had been so rapid that his short time out made a big difference. We first ran him at Silverstone and, after a day, he was struggling a little bit against the other driver who was there. I didn't appreciate it until he said it, but he had just done his fastest lap around Silverstone, by quite a considerable margin. And I think he found that difficult. He found the fitness difficult too. We were going to three quite hard races at the end of the year and I think he was disappointed in his performance, but it certainly wasn't through lack of effort."