Mixed feelings at Super Aguri
SUPER AGURI F1 TEAM driver Anthony Davidson once again made it through to the second session for today’s Qualifying at the Hungaroring. Takuma’s chances were foiled by a long visit to the weighbridge during Q1, however the pair will start the 2007 Hungarian Grand Prix in 15th and 19th positions tomorrow.
Takuma Sato “It was a tough Qualifying. We planned to do three runs. The first one was to check the car from the practice because I wasn’t really happy with the balance, so we wanted to check the car with the prime tyre. I then got called to the weighbridge, which took an unusually long time because when I had to go back into position to fire up the marshals put me in the wrong position, so I had to back up again. So we then lost the opportunity to go for the first planned option tyre run, so I only had one opportunity in the end with the proper Qualifying fuel on board. It was a decent lap, but then unfortunately it was quite gusty and the wind upset the balance of the car and I had a massive wash out and ran wide. Hopefully though the car is performing well and so I hope that we can have a good race tomorrow.”
Anthony Davidson “It was a very good day. I feel that I got the best out of the car and with the engineering team I feel that we managed to find a good Qualifying set-up, which is obviously vital around this circuit. The car had a nice balance all the way round and I was comfortably through to Q2 and looking forward to improving my position in the second session. Unfortunately I could only match the time that I set at the end of Q1 and 15th was the most the car had in it today, so I’m happy with our performance.”
Graham Taylor, Sporting Director “I think that we had a good session in Free Practice 3. We were watching the weather all the time, as I'm sure everybody was, and the predicted rain didn't materialise. We took an aggressive strategy, from a Qualifying point of view; we knew we had to. We thought that we had the pace to get through to Q2. Anthony did a fantastic second lap in his Q1 run and unfortunately the weighbridge delayed us a little with Takuma. We therefore had to change our plan with him and unfortunately he ran out of road in the last sector, otherwise he'd have been comfortably through to the next session as well. The conclusion is really ‘optimising’ one and ‘a bit of a shame’ with the other.”
Takuma Sato Car 22 (SA07-02)
FP3 Position 15 Fastest Lap Time 1:21.839
QUALIFYING Grid Position 19 Lap Times 1:22.143 Q1
Anthony Davidson Car 23 (SA07-03)
FP3 Position 11 Fastest Lap Time 1:21.501
QUALIFYING Grid Position 15 Lap Times 1:21.018 Q1; 1:21.127 Q2
