Super Aguri Struggle on Saturday in Britain

By
June 10 2006

The SA05 car was struggling yesterday and the situation has not improved. Sato used the T-car after a morning collision and will start last, Montagny will start the race from 20th.

The car has been extremely difficult to handle all weekend resulting in offs from all the Super Aguri drivers. Sato had a big off which damaged his car so he had to use the spare car, neither drivers managed to find a satisfactory set up.

Sato qualified 20th having set a best time of 1:26.158, but will start last due to having used a different engine after damaging his car. "It was a very hard day. During the practice session I lost it at the high-speed Beckett's corner and suffered some quite serious damage to the car. It is disappointing because we had to change to the T-car, taking a 'change of engine' penalty too. We had very little time to prepare the T-car for Qualifying, but the boys did a great job to get it ready in time. The Qualifying session was difficult because we had not completed the set-up program in the morning and had to apply the set-up to a different chassis, so the car had nervous handling. Considering what happened today I am reasonably happy with our final result, but it will be a tough race for us tomorrow."

Montagny was happy with his lap despite going off track in the morning practice, he set a best time of 1:26.316 and will start 20th. "We had a few problems this morning and I also went off the track as I was pushing the car to the limit, so not a great practice session. The Qualifying session was not too bad; we found what we were looking for and I am quite happy with my lap. For sure we are a lot slower than the rest of the grid, but with the new car it will get better."

A troubled saturday for Aguri but wants both cars to finish, "It was unfortunate that Taku went off the track and hit the barrier in the morning which meant that we had to run with the T-car for Qualifying. Franck also left the tarmac, so we could complete our testing of the Qualifying set-ups for both cars; today was a very chaotic day. We will concentrate on our original goal - to have both cars finish the race tomorrow."