French GP: Super Aguri Friday practice notes

Super Aguri F1 Team made an encouraging start to the French Grand Prix weekend during the free practice sessions at the Circuit de Nevers in Magny-Cours today. The team completed the majority of its planned running programme with Takuma and Franck, however Sakon's car crew encountered a few minor issues that hindered his progress today.

Takuma Sato:

"The weather is extremely hot and we had very low grip here at the beginning of the day. With every outing the car set-up progressed, so I am reasonably happy with the final set-up that we have found. We worked through our usual tyre programme today and the car seems to be working well considering the high temperatures. The track should continue to improve over the next two days, so we shall work further on improving the set-up tomorrow morning and hope for another good Qualifying session tomorrow."

Franck Montagny:

"Today was quite okay. This morning's session was fine and this afternoon we had a little bit more problem with the car due to temperature, but I think it's going to be okay for the rest of the weekend. We just have to work a little bit on the set-up now and I think that it is going to be cool. Unfortunately I was held up by Wurz on my quickest lap and so my fastest time could have been a little better, but I am quite happy with our work today."

Sakon Yamamoto:

"This morning was unfortunately not a perfect start to the day because we had a car problem and lost a lot of time so we could not complete our planned programme. We had a really hard job in the afternoon but were able to finish what we needed to achieve. The whole team has worked hard and I am happy that I could help them by supplying some good data for the rest of this weekend."

Aguri Suzuki, Team Principal:

"It was a reasonably good Friday for us. Sakon suffered a problem this morning, but we rectified it and in the afternoon we were able to continue with our Bridgestone tyre comparisons, which we are relatively happy with. Taku seems quite happy with the set-up of his car, but I think that Franck may not be so happy after being held up in traffic on his quick lap. That said we've managed to complete almost our entire planned programme, so it has not been a bad day."

Takuma Sato
Chassis SA05-05
FP1 Position: 15
No: of Laps: 10
Best Lap: 1:21.160
FP2 Position: 23
No: of Laps: 22
Best Lap: 1:19.996

Franck Montagny
Chassis: SA05-02
FP1 Position: 14
No: of Laps: 11
Best Lap: 1:20.790
FP2 Position: 28
No: of Laps: 14
Best Lap: 1:21.132

Sakon Yamamoto
Chassis: SA05-01
FP1 Position: 16
No: of Laps: 11
Best Lap: 1:23.891
FP2 Position: 29
No: of Laps: 32
Best Lap: 1:21.969

-superaguri-