Super Aguri happy with Friday performance

By nGO
June 30 2006

The team managed to set competitive lap times during Friday Practice with Sato and Yamamoto completing their objectives, although Franck suffered some problems.

It was contrasting days for the two Super Aguri race drivers, for the first time this year Super Aguri was able to show pace comparable to other teams through Takuma Sato's lap times, while Montagny suffered from electrical issues in session one and spinning out early on with his rough handling SA05.

A very good Friday for Sato as his car is showing good speed and appeared rock solid - He set a best lap of 1:14.391, "It was certainly one of our better days so far this season. I am very pleased that we seem to be competitive here. We still found it hard to find the right set-up today and I was struggling through the infield section as we had an oversteer balance issue. But we had good straight-line speed which is vital for this circuit and we made good progress throughout both sessions, so it was a good day."

Despite topping the speed trap in session 1, Franck's early spin prevented him from running during the afternoon bringing an end to a frustrating day - he set a best time of 1:16.489, "It was not a good testing day for me. This morning was quite good and everything worked okay, but we went out a bit early which affected the tires. So after this it was very hard to find something good for the set-up of the car and we also had a small electrical problem towards the end of the session. I then made a mistake into turn 4 at the beginning of the second session. The car was very pointy and I spun and finished the session there, so overall it was not a good day."

Yamamoto pleased with his Friday performance after setting a best lap of 1:15.120, "I would like to thank everyone in the team for their hard work during the sessions today. As the Canadian Grand Prix was only one week ago I came to Indianapolis with my confidence high. I had a very good day today. We completed our very important tire comparison and I think that we have collected very good data for the team"

Aguri looks forward to tomorrow, "I am quite happy with our performance on our first Friday in Indianapolis. Taku did a great job today and set a very good time. Sakon also collected a lot of data for the team following his longer runs and is improving with every session. It is a pity that Franck made a small mistake at the beginning of this afternoon’s session, but overall the team has had a good day, so we are looking forward to tomorrow."