Chinese GP: Super Aguri Saturday qualifying notes

It was a day of differing fortunes for Super Aguri F1 Team drivers Takuma Sato and Anthony Davidson. Anthony once again put in a solid Qualifying performance to take his SA07 into Q2 this afternoon. Takuma however endured a more difficult day and will start tomorrow's 2007 Chinese Grand Prix in 20th position on the grid.

Takuma Sato:

"I am very unhappy with the car as I could not get any bite. I could not generate any grip throughout the session and tried various things in an attempt to rectify this, but we never solved the problem and then ran out of running time. We then felt that we needed to make a radical set-up change to try to improve the performance for the Qualifying session, however the result was the same, there was no bite. There is very little that we can do before the race tomorrow, but we really need to understand what the problem is."

Anthony Davidson:

"It was a very satisfying day. I doubted that we would be able to make it through into Q2 after our running on Friday, but the track has slowly come to our car. As more rubber came down it felt like we had more balance and I was able to make it through to Q2 successfully. In view of tomorrow we are still unsure of exactly what the weather will be, but I think that we have a nice compromising set-up, so I am looking forward to the race."

Graham Taylor, Sporting Director:

"It was another normal Saturday morning session where we worked away on balance. Early on it became apparent that Takuma was struggling a little, but Anthony was taking small steps forward and that carried over into Qualifying. It was an excellent effort by Anthony, bouncing us back into Q2. We explored another avenue with Takuma before Qualifying, but again failed to reap any reward from a lap time point of view and we need to understand why that is."

Takuma Sato
Chassis: SA07-02
Grid Position: 20th
Lap Time: 1:38.218

Anthony Davidson
Chassis: SA07-03
Grid Position: 15
Lap Time: 1:37.203 Q1; 1:37.247 Q2

-credit: super aguri