Spanish GP: Super Aguri Friday practice notes

Super Aguri F1 Team drivers Takuma Sato and Franck Montagny experienced contrasting days in terms of running time and car performance for the start of the Spanish Grand Prix weekend today. The weather played an important role as a wet and cloudy morning caused the dusty track to become greasy, whilst the afternoon brought the sunshine and very different track surface conditions.

Takuma Sato:

"We did not do much running this morning due to the weather conditions, but towards the end of that session and by the end of the second session we had completed our full programme. We did some performance runs and it was encouraging to see that the balance of the car has improved and that the lap time and speed was much better, so we are happy with what we have been able to achieve today."

Franck Montagny:

"It was a very difficult day for me. This morning I completed only three laps because we had a hydraulic problem. This afternoon we did not find a good set-up for the car; it was very difficult to control, a lot of snap oversteer and many more issues. I do believe that we will find something right as Taku is fast here, but I think that we have a hard weekend coming."

Aguri Suzuki, Team Principal:

"We haven't been lucky since we came back to Europe but we need to solve the problem as soon as we can. The team has been working so hard to improve the speed of the car and the motivation within the team is amazingly high. I am little concerned about the problems we have been having, but I am sure that we will be able to solve these issues come the race on Sunday."

Takuma Sato
Chassis: SA05-05
Practice session 1: 9th, 9 laps, 1:20.744
Practice session 2: 26th, 30 laps, 1:19.616

Franck Montagny
Chassis: SA05-02
Practice session 1: 10th, 3 laps, no time
Practice session 2: 28th, 21 laps, 1:22.222

-superaguri-