August 13, 2004
Budapest, Hungary.

For the Hungary race team manager Matt Maple couldn't attend the GP, so Mapes-VO was without a second driver. Co-manager Peter van Oostende had a talk with Juha Tanskanen, the test driver at FinOz and offered him a seat untill Maple was ready to race again. But isn't it a great risk to let a driver race while he didn't do a lot of miles in an F1 car besides some tests?

Our reporters had a talk with both van Oostende and Tanskanen on the deal. Finding van Oostende wasn't that hard, he was at his usual place! Exactly, drinking the black gold.

Van Oostende:

"It's a shame Matt couldn't do the race here at the Hungaroring, but there's nothing we can do about that. We still have Mikko and I have all the faith in him to jump on that middle spot at the podium again. Last night I met Juha in one of the local pubs here in Budapest and we had a good talk. I wasn't really up to racing myself and offered Juha the drive. Juha was very surprised by the offer and luckely he agreed on driving for Mapes-VO. After we talked a bit I contacted Kari to settle the deal and he was OK on the deal. I want motivated drivers who will do their very best and I'm sure Juha will do so!"

Tanskanen:

"When i met Peter last night i couldnīt even imagine where our conversation would lead. After we had talked for a while Peter told me that Matt is unable to race in Hungary and that Mapes-VO needs a second driver for this weekend, so he asked me that if i would be interested to have a drive. I said that i want to think about it for a while so we talked bit more and fastly Peter got me convinced about things, so i said yes and now here we are i am making my F1VWC debut with Mapes-VO, 9 months after i made my simracing debut.

This is something what i could not even dream of last week and now itīs happening, as you can see i am still bit confused and suprised at the same time, positively of course. I am always giving everything on the track and i am going to do so this weekend too. I am hoping to have a steady and error free weekend and i hope that i can perform well in my F1VWC debut race.

Of course we all have to remember that everything is new for me, the car is new, a new team, new people in the team, new engineers to work with, but i donīt really think that these things are going to be so big problem that they could be in worst case because the atmosphere in Mapes-VO is so good. Iīve already met Mikko today, he seems to be a nice guy and he does his work like a professional, it will be nice to work with him and the team this weekend."