Italian GP: Super Aguri Friday practice notes

Super Aguri F1 Team made a good start to its 2006 Italian Grand Prix weekend today. Both SAF1 Team race drivers, Takuma Sato and Sakon Yamamoto, completed their respective testing programmes for the day, whilst third driver Franck Montagny, who encountered a gearbox issue during the morning session, achieved the team's highest ever position during second free practice running by setting the 10th fastest lap time of 1:24.943, only 2.3 seconds off the session leader. Happy Birthday Aguri-San!

Franck Montagny:

"We had a lot of problems today unfortunately. This morning I could only do a few laps, which is quite frustrating when I come to the circuit and I only run for 2 hours over the whole weekend. In the afternoon we also had a little problem on the car which did not allow us to complete our programme but we could complete our tyre programme."

"I'm quite happy with the lap time and for the team because this is the first time the car is in this position and I believe the race will be okay. But still I have a little bit of frustration because I would like to do some more laps, more running and more testing, but I'm quite happy because the guys did a good job today."

Takuma Sato:

"The team has done a lot of work since the last Monza test and it was good to see how the car had improved today. As a team we encountered a few problems, but I had a quite trouble free day and completed our required programme. It was very good to see the running of the third car, which has collected important data from the tyres and has shown very good performance and what the car can do. Obviously we will continue to work on improving the set-up for even better performance tomorrow."

Sakon Yamamoto:

"Today we completed a good amount of running in preparation for tomorrow. We did not encounter any major issues until the end of the second session when I had a small transmission problem and I missed the last 20 minutes of running, which was a bit of a shame. But until then we could try a lot of things and we were improving all the time. Franck did a good job I think, so we're going to look at all of the data now and prepare for tomorrow."

Aguri Suzuki, Team Principal:

"Today is my birthday and Franck produced a good top 10 finish! Taku also completed a good test session today, and although Sakon's car had a problem towards the end of the afternoon, the car is basically performing well and so I believe that tomorrow we will see a big improvement in the team."

Franck Montagny
Chassis: SA06-02
FP1 Position: 11th
No. of Laps: 7
Best Lap Time: 1:27.597
FP2 Position: 10th
No. of Laps: 24
Best Lap Time: 1:24.943

Takuma Sato
Chassis: SA06-03
FP1 Position: 9th
No. of Laps: 20
Best Lap Time: 1:26.708
FP2 Position: 26th
No. of Laps: 21
Best Lap Time: 1:26.118

Sakon Yamamoto
Chassis: SA06-04
FP1 Position: 10th
No. of Laps: 20
Best Lap Time: 1:27.310
FP2 Position: 27th
No. of Laps: 14
Best Lap Time: 1:26.705

-credit: super aguri