By nGO
April 1 2006

After a scruffy saturday where Sato and Ide were affected by many problems during practice and qualifying, they have had a blighted qualifying session and will start from 21st -22nd on the grid.

In what has been a very testing grand prix weekend, Sato suffered a hydraulics problem which limited his running during practice, and was held up on his fastest lap, although this probably would not have had much of an impact on the outcome of the grid. Rookie Ide is still struggling with the car, his grip problems equated to some off track excursions.

According to Suzuki, this qualifying has been the "toughest" due to the weather and many problems encountered, "The weather did not help us today at all and we had some problems throughout the day. We were not able to test set-ups for the car very much and Yuji spun a few times during qualifying. I must say today was the toughest qualifying for us so far. However, we shall discuss all of this in our overnight meetings and we should be able to have a better set-up for the race tomorrow."

Sato suffered a hydraulics problem and his mechanics faced a race against time to get his car up and running, he will start the race from 21 on the grid having set a best time of 1:32.279, "It was another difficult day for us. I lost about three-quarters of the practice session running due to a hydraulic problem, but the boys in the team did a great job to recover as much time as possible and get me out onto the track for a few laps in the wet conditions. The track dried out considerably for the qualifying session and I tried my best but unfortunately encountered traffic on my fastest lap. It would have been nice to make up a couple more tenths, but I think under the circumstances I am happy."

Ide had his most scruffiest weekend to date causing a red flag earlier on and taking trips over the grass all over the track, he is suffering from low grip after being unhappy with the setup. Setting a best time of 1:36.164 Ide will start from 22nd on the grid, "I was struggling to find the right setup of the car. I used two sets of tyres but they didn't warm up as I wanted it to so I went off the course few times. I couldn't get much grip for some reason so we will find out the cause of it and hopefully we could have a good race tomorrow."