May 06, 2004
After highly succesfull qualifying where Steve Elencevski scored FinOz Racing's first ever poleposition feelings at the team changed from joy to disappointment after the race. Both drivers were in the points but team had higher hopes than 5th and 6th place from the GP itself. After team had their own after-the-race-meeting both drivers and team manager shared a moment with the press.

Steve Elencevski's race comments:

"Apart from the first stint, a very disappointing race for us. We had major tyre wear problems on our 2nd,3rd & 4th stints, with lap times getting slower as fuel loads we're getting lighter. My lap times we're in the 1m23's before my pitstops, so we simply struggled with tyres & it seems our set-up was only good for a few laps. We have a lot of work to in regards to setting up the car & getting more out of our tyres. So we hope to bounce back at Barcelona."

Kari Koski's race comments:

"I had pretty good first stint and was able to get some consistant laptimes, but on 2nd and 3rd stints i made some rookie mistakes, span once and had some other close call moments also. My tyrewear wasn't so bad as Steve had, it was just between the seat and steering wheel where the biggest problem was, again. So i'm very disappointed with my race pace and i really need to focus on getting my races better. "

FinOz Team manager comments:

"Very good start for San Marino race weekend for us with both cars again on first 2 rows on the grid and Steve driving the very first poleposition for the team on our 4th race, it was just unbelievable. Looking the strategies and so on for other teams, we were out there with same strategy as others and still our driver finished the race 51seconds and one min 11 seconds off the winners time. That's almost a seconds per lap for Kari and that's really alarming. We have to find more speed for the race to keep up our 3rd place on constructors championship. We have been working very hard to catch others at the race speed, but looks like we still have a lot to do. I'm sure every member on our team will work now even harder."

The Championship continues in 2 weeks time at Circuit de Catalunya, Barcelona, where FinOz were in good shape during pre-season winter testing. Since then the team have made big improvements specially at the engine side.