Spanish GP: Jordan Friday notes

A satisfying start for the DHL Jordan Honda team in Spain, with both drivers happy with the day's free practice session. Takuma Sato watched the morning session from the motorhome after a failure of a connection to a sensor on the engine made his Jordan Honda EJ12 stop 30 metres from the pit lane exit. But he made good progress in the afternoon and will work with Fisichella's data and the engineers to make improvements for tomorrow. Fisichella ran trouble free all day and is confident of a top ten qualifying position for Sunday's race.

GIANCARLO FISICHELLA

"Today was not bad at all and I think we look alright compared with the competition. The problem is that the grip levels are very low - it's quite different on the track than during Winter testing and the car oversteers much more in these warmer conditions. But we are going in the right direction on the set up and I think we can improve by at least three tenths tomorrow as we have a few more things for the engine and chassis. If we are in the top ten tomorrow we will have done a good job."

TAKUMA SATO

"We caught up quite well today after a bad start when I suffered from an electrical connection failure just as I was exiting the pits which meant I lost the entire session. At least it happened here in Spain where I know the circuit very well but the conditions on the track are quite different from the winter testing so I could have done with more time to work on the car's balance. I think we've collected good data though and I believe we will be in good shape tomorrow."

GARY ANDERSON DIRECTOR OF RACE AND TEST TEAM ENGINEERING

"We tried some different front wings and evaluated the tyres which gave us some good data for tomorrow. Takuma had to sit out of the first session because of a failure of an electrical connection to a sensor on the engine. This clearly knocked him back a little, but we'll just have to help him go through what Giancarlo has done today so that he can get a good lap time tomorrow. We were very disciplined in our approach and made sure we just treated this as a `new' circuit, so to speak, rather than try starting out on the set-ups we worked on in testing here during the Winter. Its tempting to use that set up but really everything is different now - tyres, aerodynamics etc - so all you do is confuse yourself if you take that approach. Of course it's a bonus for Taku that he hasn't had to take any time to learn the circuit this time and that will no doubt give him added confidence tomorrow."

The T car is set up for Takuma Sato for tomorrow's qualifying.

GIANCARLO FISICHELLA 8th
1.21.169
CHASSIS NUMBER 5
TAKUMA SATO 14th
1.21.351
CHASSIS NUMBER 3

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