Taku`s Barber Motorsport Park Report

What a disappointment. Takuma Sato showed front-running pace in qualifying, and in the race too, but through no fault of his own the IndyCar Series race at Barber Motorsports Park ended with the Japanese driver at the bottom of the results sheet, owing to the loss of 22 laps due to a throttle failure.

The scenic road circuit in Alabama was the only track on this year's IndyCar schedule that Sato already knew, owing to his earlier test at the venue with the KV Racing Technology team. "I knew we were going to be much more comfortable than in the first two races," he said, "although the test was held in record cold conditions. Now in contrast it was going to be quite hot, so I knew that even though my understanding of IndyCar was increasing it would still be quite challenging."

Practice on Friday went well: "I was not particularly happy with the balance in first practice, so we had to change it, but by the end of the second I was reasonably happy and had a good baseline for qualifying."

On this occasion, qualifying would mean different conditions, as it took place at 9.20 on Saturday morning. "The track conditions changed again because of

the lower temperature, and with the new red option tyres it was a bit of a challenge.

"This time we tried a more traditional qualifying approach. We can only use two sets of the red tyres in qualifying, and at the first two races I used them from the start to be sure of going through to the next round. This time we were sure we need to make most of it so I used the prime tyres for my first run to check the balance change overnight, then went onto the red tyre for my second run." It worked a treat, with Taku the second fastest overall from his qualifying group, behind only fellow ex-Diamond Racing Formula 3 team driver Will Power.

Then, in the second round of qualifying, Sato set the fifth-fastest time to move into the Firestone Fast Six for the first time in his IndyCar career. "We jumped into Q2, but getting a lap was incredibly difficult. There are no tyre warmers, so you have to get the balance with warming up the fronts and rears, and there was traffic, but I got a good enough lap to go to Q3, which was a great feeling. I was very pleased.

"I planned to use my second set of red tyres, which I'd used in Q2, but unfortunately I couldn't really feel good grip. It's easy to say now that brand-new prime tyres might have been better but we didn't know it at the time. It was a bit of a shame, but still I was happy to be able to go racing from sixth on the grid."

Which meant more learning. "It was only my third rolling start, and again I took a extremely cautious approach, but you don't really have to do that from the third row, because everyone is good to go. Putting the gas on at the start went well, but then I got close to Scott Dixon and Marco Andretti so I was cautious, just to make sure there was no risk, and slowing down relatively early. Then of course Dario Franchitti came by and then I could see Tony Kanaan on my right, and I said, 'OK here we go - we are racing.'

"I really enjoyed it. I was side by side with Tony in Turn 2, 3 and 4, and braking into Turn 5 he was again coming on my outside. It was possible because of Tony. I really respect him and he is such a great driver."

Taku settled into seventh place, tracking Franchitti ahead and inching away from Kanaan, but after 10 laps the throttle failed. "Suddenly I was just coasting on the back straight, and I knew instantly it was something to do with the throttle. I put the car in neutral and was coasting down to the pit lane, but the circuit has a lot of uphill and unfortunately my momentum was not enough to get back, so I stopped and had to wait for rescue."

Once back in the pits, Sato had to jump out of the car while the team repaired the throttle. He then rejoined, setting the sixth-fastest race lap as he battled to the end. He finished on the road between Power and Andretti, who were fourth and fifth - in other words, where he would have hoped to finish without losing 22 laps!

"Mentally it is not great to have to take your helmet off in a race and put it back on again, but I was pleased to be back racing, and I needed to experience my first pit stop and chequered flag of course! I raced with many different people, had a lot of battles and did some overtaking. We scheduled the pit stops as if I was racing and tried to simulate what would happen if I hadn't needed to stop for so long, but of course I didn't want to disturb other people's races, and I learned how to save fuel."

This coming weekend is the next race, on the Long Beach street circuit in California, which used to be an F1 track in 1976-83 -long before Taku's era! "It's nice to go there with some experience from a race and having a better understanding of the whole thing. I'm going to a place I don't know but I'm more comfortable and Long Beach has a great history. We'll keep working and hopefully I can repeat what I did in qualifying at Barber and have a good

race."