June 25, 2004
Mikko Jakonen needs to beat Scott Whiteman in the remaining 9 races if he is to hold onto the Drviers Championship lead. It's as simple as that. Finishing behind the fast Australian will not do him any favours.

As the Finnish reporters on the pitlane pressed Jakonen for an explanation why he yet again failed to qualify in the top three, he had the following to say:

"Well I wouldn't worry about it so much if I were you. We've had some trouble during the whole season to get 100% out of the car right out of the pits on the one flying lap, but so far I've always managed to finish the race higher than where I started. We have trouble getting the right tyre temperature, and we need the tyres to be in mint condition at the grid to get a good start. This time I think I did actually quite good, I made a small error at turn 11 which cost me a couple of tenths, without that I would've made 2nd probably. But even with that errror I closed the gap on the competitors in the oval section, so our straight line speed seems to be really competitive, and you know that overtaking is so much easier in the oval than in the midfield here.

So I think we're looking quite strong again here. My only concern is that it's midsummer this weekend, and my personal mechanics team who are from Finland are probably totally drunk during the whole weekend. But I hope we get the race done well anyway. Thanks, I'm off."