Gearbox problem for Sato, Hydraulic one for Yamamoto

Super Aguri F1 Team finished the first of the free practice sessions at the Shanghai International Circuit today in mixed spirits. On the positive side, Franck Montagny achieved the team’s highest timesheet position finishing the second free practice session in seventh position with a time of 1:38.464. Mechanical issues limited both Takuma and Sakon’s running during the morning session and once again restricted Takuma’s track time in the afternoon.

“Today was quite a good day from a performance point of view and for a sick man! Well, this morning I was really not happy about the car, more from a tyre point of view, because we had a lot of degradation but I think it was the same last year. We worked quite a bit on car set-up and then this afternoon we did our long runs and tyre comparisons. The car started to be quite okay so I was happy with it and when we started to do performance runs the lap time started to be quite good straight away. It was not an easy day because the temperature changed quite a lot and the track conditions also changed. There was a little bit of rain which made the track a little different again, a bit more slippery, but it was quite good fun.”

“Unfortunately today my running was very limited due to a gearbox problem. It seems that every outing I suffered some related issue and so I couldn't evaluate the car set-up much today. This morning the car worked well straight away, but this afternoon I only completed a few laps, so it was not a very good day. The session tomorrow morning will therefore be extremely important, so let's hope we have a better day tomorrow.”

“We had a hydraulic problem with my SA06 this morning so we did not have much time on the circuit and I was only able to complete eight laps. But I pushed quite hard during this session as I wanted to get to know the car and circuit better. Although we did not have any problems in the afternoon I did not feel very comfortable with the car and so I didn't have the chance to find a set-up I was happy with. Franck did a good job, so we will compare data and speak to the engineers about how we can improve on this situation for tomorrow.”

"Franck did a very good job to finish in seventh position today, so I am very happy with that. Taku's car had a gearbox issue so we have to find a solution to this problem as soon as possible. Sakon's car had a hydraulic problem in the morning, but was able to have a good session this afternoon and complete quite a few laps today. We have collected quite a bit of data from the car today so overall we have had quite a good Friday.”