By Phil Huff
August 20 2005

BAR Honda's Takuma Sato suffered an awful qualifying session today, running wide on the already notorious turn eight, before blocking Williams' Mark Webber on his fast lap. After a driver finishes his fast lap, he generally slows down significantly, saving as much fuel as possible for the race. His race engineer would be talking to him on the radio, advising him of what pace to run in order to get back to the pitlane before the next driver comes round.

As a general rule, a driver can take a little over two minutes to return to the pitlane, and not cause any troubles.

However, that didn't happen today, leaving Sato on the racing line as Mark Webber approached, and now facing the stewards to explain his actions.

"I didn't have an update on the radio," said Takuma, placing the blame firmly on the team. "There may have been some problem so I really didn't see [Webber]. By the time I realised, it was just down the straight, so I'm really sorry for that."

"It's been a difficult day."