San Marino: Takuma Sato chats to the press

Sato speaks
By Phil Huff (22/04/2004)
April 22 2004

Takuma Sato sat in on the Thursday Press Conference at San Marino but, with Michael Schumacher alongside, the Lucky Strike BAR Honda driver didn't get to say too much.

How do you think things have gone so far this season?

Obviously we are very happy about the things that have happened and obviously the racing wasn't easy for me the first three races but the car has worked very good and strongly. All three drivers, test driver Anthony (Davidson), Jenson (Button) and I are very confident about the car and putting so much commitment into the team. We are working well. For me to come back to the Grand Prix for a second season is very good and exciting.

Did you think it was going to be this good?

The beginning of the season was nervous, but the car had a lot of potential. I had a really exciting race in Bahrain so it is nice after this.

There was an accusation after the first two races that you were over-driving. Do you feel that you have got that sorted out now?

It is a difficult question. Obviously a driver is always driving as fast as he can and you are always committed. The difficult things are that we have a small number of laps before the qualifying and there is a lot of things that we have to do. It is never going to be perfect. But I think now we are back in Europe it is more relaxed with the structure and the way things happen at the weekends, and more, I think, enjoyable now.

What about the battle with Jarno Trulli in Bahrain?

Jarno was a little bit at the start, but basically I started with Ralf and the last 15 laps to the finish was with Alonso.

And how enjoyable was that?

It was good. We were fighting for the points. I think Bahrain has a really great opportunity for overtaking people and those last 15 laps were tough, but it was a good battle.

And the testing since then – Jenson did 150 laps in one day at Ricard, I presume that is pretty good...

We all went to the Barcelona test and it was a good test. Then we went to Paul Ricard and Jenson completed nearly 300 laps in two days. Unfortunately the day I arrived was stormy weather and we couldn't complete any timed laps. Basically we just did out laps to collect data. But we are on the pace in testing and we are confident for Europe and particularly here.

After these first three races have you slightly reappraised your ambitions for the season? Have you thought I can do a little better than I thought I was going to do?

I think that probably the biggest grey area was how the BAR-Honda would be performing. But we did a lot of hard work over the winter and I'm particularly pleased we have shown some good performance. We have scored a lot of points and I think we will rightly continue with the package throughout the season.