Japanese GP Tyrrell Saturday qualifying notes

Japanese Grand Prix - Final Qualifying October 28, 1995

Mika Salo and Ukyo Katayama will start tomorrow's Japanese Grand Prix from the 12th and 14th positions. Like many of the other drivers, Mika and Ukyo could not improve their lap times in the second qualifying session. Mika's best today was 1 min 41.637 sec and Ukyo's was 1 min 42.273 sec. Mika kept his 12th position on the grid but Ukyo dropped one place and will start 14th.

Mika Salo: "The car was fine today but I think the circuit was slower for me and I couldn't improve the performance. I am satisfied with 12th position because it was a big step to move up one place on the grid. I hope it will rain tomorrow..."

Ukyo Katayama: "My first thoughts go to Aguri Suzuki. Even though he took my 13th place I hope he will be fit for the race. The balance of the car was better than yesterday but I had a lot of traffic on my last two sets of tyres. A big thank you to my mechanics who changed the engine in time for qualifying."

Harvey Postlethwaite, Managing Director - Engineering: "Under the circumstances we are quite happy with 12th and 14th. Today we didn't go quicker and did not make significant progress with the car. We are confident we can improve the handling further and work on a good race balance for tomorrow. We are often more competitive in the race than in qualifying so we could score some points tomorrow."

Takaaki Kimura, Yamaha F1 Project Leader: "We are a little bit disappointed we did not improve on yesterday's times, but perhaps it was due to the weather conditions. We had no problems with the engines this morning but we decided to change Ukyo's for qualifying as we were not entirely happy with its top speed, and we want to put on a good performance here at Suzuka. I would like to thank the Tyrrell Mechanics for the speed of the engine change. Both race cars will have fresh C spec OX10C engines for tomorrow's race."