By Phil Huff (14/08/2004)
August 14 2004

Lucky Strike BAR Honda's Takuma Sato lines up third on the grid, and therefore has to face the Fastest Three press conference. Here's waht he had to say... Taku, a great lap from you too but quite a spectacular moment at turn 11?

Yeah. It was the fastest part of the circuit. I dropped a wheel a little bit and I lost a few tenths but it wouldn't have cost me a lot, I wouldn't be on the front row anyway so I'm very happy to get on the second row.

This race has been won five times from third place on the grid - what are your thoughts on that?

It's been great to be back on the front rows here because after Indy, to be honest, we struggled a little bit on speed for the next few races. But then at Hockenheim, the last race, we were back on the pace and here we are back on the pace again so it was a very good step forward and we are very happy with it.



Was that a bit of a surprise or not here?

It is a good surprise, to be honest. Obviously we knew we were going to be stronger. But until the last race in Germany we slightly lacked the pace after Indy, to be honest. But I think we worked really hard again with the engineers and designers, made a good step forward since then and I think it proved in the last two races that we are back on the pace, which is absolutely great news.

Presumably, you were expecting higher temperatures here. Did you base your tyre choice on that?

Yeah, I mean, as Michael mentioned, the last few weeks we tested at Jerez with more than 50 degrees track temperature, which is like yesterday's situation, and we were very confident with the compound and the construction, it was a good step for the tyres and certainly it worked really well yesterday as well. But today, even so, the car and tyres worked really well even though it was more than 20 degrees cooler than yesterday, so we are very happy with that.

We have seen you make some interesting overtaking moves this season so far, this is a particularly difficult circuit on which to overtake...

It is difficult. This was an almost impossible overtaking circuit until last year, obviously. The circuit was changed last year, which I didn't drive until this year, but I think we saw a few people did quite good moves last year so it is still possible, but the circuit is quite dry and it is quite windy and gusty so it is always slippery off line, it is always a very big risk to overtake people here.

But you might be taking that risk?

Well, nothing is impossible, obviously. But we'll see with our strategies and obviously we are reasonably confident with the consistency of everything so we should be able to do a good fight tomorrow afternoon.

Looking at what is going on with Jenson Button, is it a particular satisfaction for you to be in front of him and some kind of fresh air for the team?

It is obviously not exactly the same atmosphere as it was at the last races this weekend but we are very professional people in drivers and designers and mechanics and engineers so once we go into the weekend we are absolutely the same as we were working. So basically it is no changes and we still discuss with an open manner the data, which is no problem, and obviously he is very committed and I am very committed, we are pushing each other in that circumstance nothing has changed.

What is your personal strategy for tomorrow - pushing all the time or scoring some points and finishing on the podium?

As a race driver you have to push all the way through and that is also my style as well, so I will be pushing right from the start. But also, if it's a hot day tomorrow like yesterday, we have to use the tyres very well but I think we are very happy with our tyre situation here and last year we were very strong so we should be very strong tomorrow afternoon.