Formula One news

Difficult day for Super Aguri drivers

The morning's Free Practice Session ended prematurely for the Super Aguri drivers when both Takuma Sato and Franck Montagny visited the gravel off-track. Takuma drove the third car (chassis SA05-01) in the afternoon as the damage to his race car could not be repaired in time for the beginning of the Qualifying session.

Sato commented on his day: "It was a very hard day. During the practice session I lost it at the high-speed Beckett's corner and suffered some quite serious damage to the car. It is disappointing because we had to change to the T-car, taking a 'change of engine' penalty too. We had very little time to prepare the T-car for Qualifying, but the boys did a great job to get it ready in time. The Qualifying session was difficult because we had not completed the set-up program in the morning and had to apply the set-up to a different chassis, so the car had nervous handling. Considering what happened today I am reasonably happy with our final result, but it will be a tough race for us tomorrow."

Franck Montagny said: "We had a few problems this morning and I also went off the track as I was pushing the car to the limit, so not a great practice session. The Qualifying session was not too bad; we found what we were looking for and I am quite happy with my lap. For sure we are a lot slower than the rest of the grid, but with the new car it will get better."

Aguri Suzuki, Super Aguri Team Principal, said: "It was unfortunate that Taku went off the track and hit the barrier in the morning which meant that we had to run with the T-car for Qualifying. Franck also left the tarmac, so we could complete our testing of the Qualifying set-ups for both cars; today was a very chaotic day. We will concentrate on our original goal - to have both cars finish the race tomorrow."

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