Super Aguri show first signs of being competitive

By nGO
March 19 2006

In Super Aguri's second grand prix, the SA05 in the hands of Sato battled with the likes of Liuzzi and Monteiro finishing 14th. Ide drove a solid and clean race before retiring. The gap is closing and the team is slightly suprised to see their 4 year old car managing to fight with the competition so early on.

The start was potentially dangerous as there were many cars infront, and behind the Super Aguri of Sato and Ide starting from 17th and 18th. Ide fell foul to mechanical problems retiring from a solid run on lap 33, while Sato brings the car home to a well deserved 14th, in a race where many cars dropped out from reliabilty issues. 

Both cars survived the first lap without any problems with Sato making an excellent start to jump both midlands. This time around there was no penalty hampering Ide's start and he drove a mature race allowing faster cars to overlap him without too much disruption. But due to mechanical problems during lap 33, he has to wait a while longer before achieving his personal goal of completing a grand prix. Overall it was a great race as there were drastic improvement in all areas, the race pace compared to the top has improved, qualifying time is closer, the pitstop crew and team communication is unrecognisably good compared to last week, and for the first time the SA05 was able to battle for position with other teams.

After an impressive display, Sato is glad and full of praise for the team, "Great team work has meant that we have been able to improve on our pitstops since Bahrain and as a result I lost no time and was able to get back into the race and actually challenge a few cars. Of course we struggle on the high downforce corners with our pace, but I had another exciting race and at least we managed to finish the race once again. We still have a lot of hard work to do if we are to catch up to our nearest rivals, but we showed good teamwork today and I am very happy and proud of the team."

Ide drove a solid race until his retirement but was still unhappy with his car, "The balance of the car was not good from the start and I had the same mechanical problem as I had in Bahrain. The problem got worse as I continued the race and gradually the car's pace got slower and I could not accelerate on the straight, then I stopped. I really wanted to finish the race, so my goal is to finish the race in Australia and then move on from there."