January 26, 2004
FinOz Racing completed another 4 test days without technical difficulties and their R&D work is right on schedule. FinOz team members Kari Koski, Steve Elencevski and Juha Tanskanen commented on the recent their Silverstone test.

Kari's comments:

"Test went really well. No problems in any of the 4 days. We managed to follow our schedule and further developed our engine and car. My test runs was ok, i wasn't feeling too good on that day so maybe i took the laps a bit carefully and easy. Times were good and we just need to keep working hard also in the future. As team manager i was very pleased with Steve's performance once again, he is truely a champion. We just need to give good enough car to challenge the top spots. And what comes to Juha, he did brilliant job. No errors, kept the car on the track and gave really good feedback allready on his first test runs with the car which he doesn't have any experience. He need to get more laps, but i'm sure the speed will also come there."

Steve's Silverstone test comments:

" I really like the Silverstone circuit, its actually one of my favourites on the calendar. As for testing, i had a very good day's testing, doing 3-4 lap runs & a couple of hotlaps towards the end of my session just to see how quick our FO-004 is & i have to say im very pleased. Even though we are still down on engine power, we still managed some encouring lap times & if it wasnt for a mistake at Club on my fastest lap, im sure i could have done a mid 1m18.

We now head to Monza where we will struggle for top end speed, although our main priority is to keep chipping away & developing our car in time for Melbourne."

Juha's Comments after his first test duties in the team:

"Ok, as you all know, friday was the very first time for me ever to drive in F1VWC series and I also drove my first laps with the newest FinOz car then. So I didn`t have much of expectations when we talk about lap times. I still have a lot to learn about the new car. It differs many ways from those cars that I have driven earlier, but I know already that the car is very good. It has a lot of potential already in this phase of developing. Our engine is also fairly good, especially on high rpm`s, but we still have much work to do to get it to the level we want to. Well that`s enough about the car this time, back to the testing. Overall I am quite happy about how the tests went. I made only few minor errors during these two days and could keep the car in one piece. We also got all information what we needed out of the car, so I`d say that Silverstone testing went very well."

Next up is the fast Monza track. Car still lacks some horsepower and top end speed because of that. But as allready noticed in previous testing session, that doesn't slow too much the FinOz drivers. Juha will be busy with his other duties so Kari and Steve will be behind the FO-004 at Monza.