Super Aguri surprises at Melbourne
Surprise of the day was the performance of the Super Aguri Formula One team. Already during the third free practice session, Davidson impressed with a very quick 4th time. During the qualifying session, team mate Takuma Sato was able to his car in 10th position on tomorrow's starting grid. Team mate Anthony Davidson will start from an 11th position.
Takuma Sato “What can I say, it was an absolutely fantastic team effort. It was a difficult day again as it was spitting with rain and a set-up change took longer than expected in the practice session so we only completed a few laps. During the whole of Qualifying the team worked well together, building up the car, step-by-step and things just went the right way. I was always going to be very happy if we made it into Q2, but I never imagined that we would reach Q3 - but we did, and it is a great feeling. Obviously this is just the start of the season, and we have a lot of work to do, so for tomorrow we just hope to have a good race.”
Anthony Davidson “It was awesome. I felt really on top of the car and what I did in Free Practice continued on in to Qualifying. I was really enjoying it and then I went off on my first attempt and I lost a little bit of time. On my last run I lost a lot of time in the last corner and I didn’t set a good lap, but my next two split times were better than Taku, so I'm happy and generally really pleased for the team, but a little bit frustrated that I set my best time in Free Practice and not Qualifying.”
Graham Taylor, Sporting Director “Fantastic news for the team. Again the weather interrupted the preparation for the final Free Practice session, but we got some good running in at the end and I think we showed ourselves to be in a racing state of mind. Come Qualifying, we tried to keep the boys as calm as possible, including ourselves, and we knew that if everything went our way we had a shot at getting through to Q3, but we weren't really expecting it. For Anthony to miss out on Q3 is the only disappointing thing about Qualifying today. To get Taku through to Q3 and to finish in the top 10 at the first race of our second season in the World Championship is just astounding. Everyone in the team, and back home at the factory in Leafield, did a fantastic job; the drivers drove very well and the Engineers got the cars balanced well. I would also like to thank all of our sponsors and partners Honda and Bridgestone Potenza.”
