Both cars finish after a tough weekend

By nGO
June 11 2006

There were many problems for Super Aguri, but the team put it all behind them as Sato and Montagny wrestle to the finish in 17th and 18th place.

Montagny lined up 20th on the grid while Sato started 21st after having to use the spare car after damaging his car during saturday practice. The SA05 responded badly to the challenges of silverstone, as a result the drivers had to cope with a lack of traction and plenty of oversteer.

Both drivers had a clean start avoiding any first lap carnage, Montagny and Sato were trading places with each other. From there on their positions remained static for the rest of the race, only moving up from other driver's retirement. The pace was very poor, the Super Aguri cars were overlapped by every other team and so the SA06 cannot come soon enough. However the reliability was a massive turn around from the last few rounds, Super Aguri achieved their goal of having two cars finish.

Sato finished 17th,  “It is great that we have achieved a two-car finish again. We had a difficult start to the weekend but in the end we finished the race, which is a good result for the team. Obviously we were quite off the pace today and it was a tough race for us, but the next two rounds of the championship have different track characteristics to Silverstone, so we will concentrate now on these circuits and look forward to the next fly-aways.”

Finishing 18th Montagny was pleased that the cars ran without any problems, “The beginning of the race was really difficult for me, I do not know why, if it was the tyres or not, but the car was really unstable and it was impossible for me to follow the pace of the others. After a few laps the track improved and the car got a little better also, but I still had a lot of oversteer and no traction at all. The good news is that we had both cars finish the race and we did not have any engine or chassis problems, so that is good. We have to improve everything for the next two rounds but this is a good result for the team today.”

A good result for the Aguri team at the end of a hard weekend,  "I am glad that both SA05 cars crossed the line at the chequered flag today. It is our first two-car finish since the Australian Grand Prix. The performance of our cars is low, so we have to concentrate on finishing the races until we introduce our new car during the next European rounds. I want to thank the whole SUPER AGURI F1 TEAM for working so hard this weekend. As our team is based in the UK it is great to have both cars finish at the British Grand Prix, so I am happy with this result."