FPR hopeful ahead of Oran Park.

Following the race day speed that they showed during the last couple of rounds of the Australian V8 series at Darwin and Queensland, Ford Performance Racing have sighted Oran Park as being the turn around meeting for the Prodrive team.

Following some disappointing showings on the Saturday, FPR drivers Greg Ritter and Jason Bright are concentrating the majority of their efforts in qualifying.

After three podium finishes at Oran Park so far in his six V8 Supercar visits to the circuit, CAT FPR Falcon driver Jason Bright is eager to take the next step up from his best result of second in 2002, in which he shares with FPR, the team having raced to second at Oran Park in 2003.

"Oran Park is a very challenging circuit in that it has a good layout but the surface is very different in comparison to any other circuit that we race at", Bright said. "This is also one of the bumpier circuits in the series. We have done a lot of work to ensure that our car remains stable on
bumps following the problems we encountered at Queensland Raceway, so this should help us over the weekend."

Sporting a brand new livery to commemorate the manufacturer's 80-year sponsorship of the Geelong Football Club in line with Ford's 80th anniversary of operations in Australia, Greg Ritter is also looking for a good result on a track he remembers well.

"I am honoured to be playing a part in celebrating Ford's 80th Anniversary and their 80 year partnership with the Geelong Football Club at Oran Park. The car looks great and with some reliability and our ever improving car speed, we should be in the hunt for strong result."

"This will be my first V8 Supercar race at Oran Park but I am very familiar with the circuit, having won my Formula Ford title there. I think that this will be a very challenging round and it would be great to play our part in celebrating Ford's 80th with an all Ford podium result."

FPRs managing director Tim Edwards is hoping that past results will count for a lot when the action gets under away at the weekend. "We have focused our attention on damper development to overcome the problems that we faced in Queensland. We expect to see a significant improvement in this area with both cars at Oran Park."

"The team has done well at this circuit in the past so we are looking forward to the challenge ahead of us."