British GP: Super Aguri Saturday qualifying notes

The morning's Free Practice Session ended prematurely for the Super Aguri F1 Team when both Takuma Sato and Franck Montagny visited the gravel off-track. Takuma drove the third car (chassis SA05-01) in the afternoon as the damage to his race car could not be repaired in time for the beginning of the Qualifying session.

Takuma Sato:

"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."

Franck Montagny:

"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."

Aguri Suzuki, Team Principal:

"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."

"Silverstone is a high-speed circuit and the differences between the F1 cars' performances will become very clear and it will also be another very tough race for us. We will concentrate on our original goal - to have both cars finish the race tomorrow."

Takuma Sato
Chassis: SA05-05
Grid Position: 20th (pending penalty)
Best Lap Time: 1:26.158

Franck Montagny
Chassis: SA05-02
Grid Position: 21st
Best Lap: 1:26.316

-superaguri-