By
August 26 2006

Despite a promising practice session in the morning, the changing track conditions caught Yamamoto out, while chassis problems made it difficult for Sato to set a quick lap. Yamamoto will start the race 20th while Sato will start from the back row.

This morning's running looked promising with the cars setting similar times to their competitor's. But due to seperate problems both drivers struggled to even come within a second of the times they set in Saturday practice. Yamamoto qualified 21st, Sato 22nd, due to Alber's engine change they will be promoted by one position.

Yamamoto could not replicate his Saturday practice performance, he set a best time of 1:30.607,  "This morning we continued with our car set-up plans from yesterday and progressed with the new tyre options. The car balance changed between FP3 and Qualifying, mainly due to the track conditions, and so we had to adjust our set-up again during Qualifying. We were unable to find a set-up that would give us a good lap time in the short amount of running that we had, so our times were much slower than those in the morning. However, I am looking forward to tomorrow and to hopefully finishing my first race with the team in the SA06."

Hard luck for Sato as a chassis problem caused him to struggle with the car in qualifying, setting a best time of 1:30.850, "It is a disappointing result. We had a new front suspension on my car today and this morning we made good progress during the session with only a small issue towards the end. In Qualifying, however, we had a major chassis related problem which caused me to struggle with the handling and I therefore could not set a good lap time. I have a good feeling from the SA06 from this morning's session, so I hope that we can have a good race tomorrow."

Aguri hopes his drivers can finish the race on Sunday, "The complete version of the SA06 is showing potential but we have not had enough time to set-up the car and you can see this from our Qualifying times today. Takuma was progressing well in the car this morning, but unfortunately experienced a significant chassis problem during the Qualifying session. Sakon has done a consistently good job and made no mistakes so far this weekend. He has been improving with every session and I hope that he will be able to finish the race tomorrow."