February 17, 2004
The FinOz team don't shirk the press, that's for sure! Drivers to the fore again following the recent test session in France.

Kari Koski's comments from 1st day of Magny-Cours practice:

"Day went really well, car was good and no technical problems. Made some tyre testing and longer runs with more fuel on the car. At the end of

the day went on low fuel was really pushing to get to the limit. Not entirely happy with my performance, felt like i didn't get all out the driver this time. Car was really good so no complains on that, it was the driver this time. Next back to Barcelona, first to the official launch and then to the track. We have more BHP now than last time so should break my personal lap record there. Still some work to be done, but i think we are in good shape at Melbourne."

Steve Elencevski's comments (days 2 and 3):

"Not my favourite circuit so i requested i do 2 days testing here at Magny Cours & i was very happy with how my testing went. On my first day

i concentrated on longer runs & did some tyre tests for Michelin which we're quite positive & then on day 2 i worked more on qualifying runs

for the upcoming season. Only 3 weeks until my home race so i cant wait to get to Melbourne for the season opener. I'm also looking forward to our car launch on Wednesday at Barcelona, where we will unveil our new car & do some set-up work in preperation for Oz."

*Juha Tanskanen's comments (day 4):

"Umm, well we had some bad luck today as you all know already, i had an off after few of driving. All happened very quickly, i felt suddenly when i was accelerating out of the corner that everything isn`t right at the car and then it felt something broke down and after that I became a passenger. Luckily i was able to reduce the speed that the hit to the wall wasen`t so hard and car didn`t get too badly damaged. Guys did a good work to fix the car fastly, so about an hour later i was already back on the track".

"Well that`s enough about my crash, testing went well, We got our testing program completed, we got lot of usual information about how car behaves on so called "mixed layout" circuit. I don`t like Magny-Cours track so much and didn`t have so high hopes about laptimes today, but when car is that good what it was today it was easy to complete needed laps and even get a fairly good laptime. The car feels good, we have made some progress with developing after A1-Ring and Ferrari has done a good job again with engine R&D".

"Few words about upcoming events I am really optimistic feelings about upcoming tests at Barcelona and Silverstone, as we have already shown that we have lot of potential and enough speed to be on top of the charts. Well - gotta run now i am already bit late from the team meeting, see ya guys at our launch on Wednesday at Barcelona."

Team manager comments after 4 days of testing:

"As a package, these 4 days were good for us, made good progress with the car setup on this track. And Steve did some fantastic laptimes. It

was shame that Juha had that small off on day 4. But it looks like there was some suspension failure before Juha did go off. Now we have to

investigate what happened and to be sure that won't happen again. We also have some pictures about Juha's accident, those will be released

soon with full technical analysis what happened, so more about that later."