June 18, 2004
Puma F1 team boss Dave Cummings chatted to an F1VWC News reporter prior to the Canadian GP Qualifying session, and had the following thoughts on his team for 2004 and 2005:-

"I can announce that Chris Galloway, Andreas Wagner, and Myself have all signed retainers to stay with the team in 2005. All drivers have the choice to leave the team if we the management fail to produce a car that is to racing standards.

We feel that we can, and we are trying our best to open our 2004 account, and get our first ever points and to build up from that, because once we get the first point we will have fulfilled the Porsche contract to the end of 2005".

"People have asked would I take back the VW engines in 2005 if we didn?t continue with Porsche, the answer to that is we will consider it but there are more attractive engines out there - 'Puma - Mercedes' seems to have a nice ring, but no where near as nice as 'Puma - Porsche'. I will be very upset if we did lose the Porsche power plant because we are running very well with the engineers from Porsche and we are yet to have a single engine related failure."

"The 2005 car I cannot say what it will entail but the aero package may be tweaked, but the 'strange' front end we have been running (for the updated car to be debuted soon) suits our chassis, but the rear is where most the work will be carried out".

"We are at the time unsure of what new rules will be out for 2005 if or if not we can build dedicated qualifying cars and so on. Basically the whole team are doing really well and we are in talks with all drivers to sign them till the end of the 2005 season".

?We are looking forward to the Canadian Race where we think we have a good chance of a top ten finish, which I wish was all we needed to keep Porsche! But we think we have a good package for the US and SPA circuits.?