September 26, 2004
Southern Cross United Motorsports celebrated well into Monday after a triumphant win by Kieran Ryan at the Italian Grand Prix. After a close fought tussle all race with Mikko Jakkonen, Kieran finally broke his hoodoo of never having won an F1 event, and he did it in style.

I was lucky enough to be in the SCUM motorhome when Dan, Rab and Kieran got back from the podium and got an exclusive interview with all three.

"Kieran, can you give us a run-down of your weekend and how you are feeling at the moment".

''It's great to finally win a grand prix, 28grand prix long, but at last I've done it. The weekend just started as any other, I went through the usual fuel load, tyre checks everything else and securing 5th on the grid was about where I expected to put the car. When the rain came I had mixed emotions. I do love the rain as I find it truly awesome to drive a car through Ascari especially, with pouring rain, not the easiest thing to do but when it started to dry up during the race I was happy.

I had a great start and was up to 2nd by lap 2 and leading by lap 6, really unexpected but the car was just fantastic in the mixed weather. I was satisfied on a 3 stopper and the boys were just unbelievable! They got the stops all, sub 6 seconds which is what I think really made the difference. By lap 17 it was already looking set for a race long battle between myself and my former team mate but this time I wasn't going to let him steal the show. He led for most of that period but not by much, I kept him honest the whole way until I pitted for the last time on lap 42 dropping the lead by just 2 seconds!

But 6 laps later, under a locking wheel I passed Mikko into the first chicane but I had ran wide just enough for him to keep me honest and he was back past me through Ascari on lap 50, but he in turn made a tiny error into Parabolleca and I just slipped through and put in the fastest lap of the race with a few laps to go and I just went for it and when I crossed the line I just couldn't believe it.

It's been just an amazing day for me, with the press, autograph hunters, interviewers, everything! The team had a nice party for me, welcoming me to SCUM just a few days ago, the one Kylie was at apparently! Well I think the team and I shall have another one tonight, all invited, and since Kylie may come back, I'm sure Andy won't be falling behind!

I never would have believed I could win here of all places. It's no secret that this sort of track configuration I dislike, so to win here, is something else.

France, the next Grand Prix, was the track that I thought I could have a chance to win this year, so I still will keep that aim up and maybe make it 2 wins in a row, after all they say it does get easier to win your second race once you've gotten your first, I just hope I don't turn into Alesi, and have his bad luck at winning (touch wood)!''.

"Thanks Kieran and congratulations on the race win".

" Rab, you and car 0 didn't have a great weekend, what went wrong?".

"Well to start with, I think having a huge party the night before qualifying is definitely a no-no from now on. I woke up very seedy on Saturday morning, but at least I woke up alone. Unfortunately the same can't be said for a certain other person.

Practise started well on Saturday morning, I was bedding in a set of tyres, when I lost the electrics. The dash lights, my radio, my air-conditioning and the CD player all shutdown coming down the back straight. I got back to the pits, hot, sweaty and pissed off. My guys plugged in the lap-top to see what the problem was and the car fried the laptop. The guys then went and saw Dan and told him we needed his laptop and that is when all hell broke loose in the pits. He wouldn't give them his laptop because he was mid-way through the 7th level of Doom3 and didn't want to stop playing. Needless to say I didn't make it back onto the track.

We thought we had the problem sorted for qualifying, but it happened again coming out of the final corner and that just turned a very ordinary lap into a real shitty one.

I was happy to see a wet track for the start of the race, we haven't seen too many this season. Starting from 18th I was a bit cautious, but I did manage to pick up a couple places into the first chicane, but then ran wide onto the wet side of the track on my 2nd lap and gave those places back. By the 5th lap I had picked them up again and was in 15th place and feeling fairly confident of picking up a few more before my first pit-stop on lap 10.

But, when you have a bad weekend, you have a bad weekend and did I have a bad weekend. At the end of 6 the dash lights started flashing on and off , the CD player started jumping and the engine started mis-firing. The team radioed to me, (which was only working intermittently) to stay out until my scheduled pit stop. By the time I got to the pits the problem was getting worse and I just parked it.

I would like to congratulate Kieran on a fantastic drive, unfortunately I got to watch most of it. He put in a stellar performance and to beat Mikko by only 1 second shows that he can cope with the pressure of leading and winning races.

Oh, a word of warning to Andy Graydon, Kylie will be attending tonights celebration and so will your wife."

"Thanks Rab, hopefully you'll have a better race next weekend".

"Dan is there anything you want to say about your drivers and the team?".

"What an incredibly exciting race and a bloody awesome drive by Kieran. I guess if you look at it on paper, the win was inevitable, put one of the best natural talents going around into what is easily the best package in this year's field and it will lead to a win. Just a shame it took us this long to figure out the secret."

"Oh and one more thing, Doom3 - it ROCKS."

"Well thanks for your time guys, I know you are all eager to get the festivities started and it looks like they are about to get underway. I can see that Kylie has just walked into the SCUM area and as usual Andy Graydon is right on her tail - so to speak. So we will leave it there and I wish you guys good luck in France."

One can only wonder how this team would perform if last years champion, Shiro Ryong was to put in an appearance in one of the last couple of races. I'm sure that is on the minds of the SCUM boys and many other team managers.