Some issues but Super Aguri still make progress

By nGO
June 23 2006

All three drivers struggle during this mornings cold weather conditions. The team still strive for a good set up as problems plague Montagny during the afternoon.

Super Aguri head to Canada having completed a strong Grand Prix where both cars finished. This Friday the team was fully able to take advantage of running a third car, and all three drivers managed to get good work done.

The track conditions during the morning were less then ideal, only half of all the cars decided to do any real running during practice 1. The weather improved for Practice two allowing the team to make good progress, although both Sato and Montagny still struggle with some aspects of the car.

Sato is not happy with the balance, he set a best lap time of 1:19.624, "It was a good first day although we were struggling to find good car balance and suffered quite a lot with oversteer. The cars’ aero specification is very different from what we used when we were in Europe so this morning’s session was spent testing the balance and starting our tyre programme. The cold temperature this morning was not favourable for our tyre runs and although the weather improved in the afternoon we continued to struggle a lot with the balance. We will work on that and hope to have a better day tomorrow."

Problems in second practice cost Montagny track time, he set a best lap time of 1:21.134, " This morning wasn’t too bad and we did some good work on the car. This afternoon though we had many problems again on the car and unfortunately we lost quite a lot of running as we worked on the car in the garage. Looking forward to tomorrow, I am not very happy about the set-up of the car as it is just now, so we will work on this tomorrow morning in the last practice session and hope that we find something good for Qualifying."

Sakon enjoys himself as he focuses on tyres and is showing good pace, he set a best lap time of 1:20.197, "This is the first time that I have driven on this circuit and I enjoyed it very much. This morning the track was quite slippery and the car was hard to drive. Today I was concentrating on our tyre programme and fortunately the track improved throughout the afternoon session so I was able to complete a good number of longer runs for our tyre comparison and collect a lot of data which I hope will be useful for tomorrow and for the race."

Aguri Suzuki is happy with his team's performance on friday, "I think that all three SA05 cars went quite well today despite both Taku and Franck encountering a number of issues. Taku’s times are good, very consistent, and all-in-all we completed everything we wanted to in today’s programme, so I am reasonably happy with our on track progress and our start to the Canadian Grand Prix weekend."