By nGO
September 8 2006

Super Aguri have their best friday weekend with all three cars completing a good number of laps, Montagny getting into the top 10 on Aguri's birthday.

There was uncertainty over the weather in Monza but the during the practices the track was dry. Davidson's Honda engine gave up spectacularly causing a red flag within the first few minutes. When the times did resume Montagny's first practice session was cut short after an initial problem, but Sato and Yamamoto made the most of this morning.

There were problems encountered with the transmission which halted running for Yamamoto, but the crucial data has been collected today. Montagny bounced back from the disappointment earlier by lapping the car into the top ten for this first time this season, coupled with the fact that all three cars ran without being in any incidents, it could be said today was a perfect present for the Aguri Suzuki team principle.

Montagny happy despite problems, He set a fastest time of 1:24.943, "We had a lot of problems today unfortunately. This morning I could only do a few laps, which is quite frustrating when I come to the circuit and I only run for 2 hours over the whole weekend. In the afternoon we also had a little problem on the car which did not allow us to complete our programme but we could complete our tyre programme. I'm quite happy with the lap time and for the team because this is the first time the car is in this position and I believe the race will be okay. But still I have a little bit of frustration because I would like to do some more laps, more running and more testing, but I'm quite happy because the guys did a good job today."

Sato looking to improve more tomorrow, he set a fastest time of 1:26.118, "The team has done a lot of work since the last Monza test and it was good to see how the car had improved today. As a team we encountered a few problems, but I had a quite trouble free day and completed our required programme. It was very good to see the running of the third car, which has collected important data from the tyres and has shown very good performance and what the car can do. Obviously we will continue to work on improving the set-up for even better performance tomorrow."

Problems end Yamamoto's second practice session early, he set a fastest time of 1:26.705, ""Today we completed a good amount of running in preparation for tomorrow. We did not encounter any major issues until the end of the second session when I had a small transmission problem and I missed the last 20 minutes of running, which was a bit of a shame. But until then we could try a lot of things and we were improving all the time. Franck did a good job I think, so we're going to look at all of the data now and prepare for tomorrow."

Aguri takes Frank's top ten as a present, sort of "Today is my birthday and Franck produced a good top 10 finish! Taku also completed a good test session today, and although Sakon's car had a problem towards the end of the afternoon, the car is basically performing well and so I believe that tomorrow we will see a big improvement in the team."