02/05/2006
NEWS STORY
Super Aguri heads to the Nürburgring circuit in Germany this week for the fifth round of the 2006 FIA Formula One World Championship. The historic track features a mixture of very slow through to high-speed corners; from the revised Turn 1 to the very high speed 'S' that follows the hairpin. The undulating circuit used for the F1 race is 5.148 kilometres or 3.199 miles long, equating to 308.863 kilometres or 191.938 miles over the 60-lap race distance.
Takuma Sato: "I enjoy racing at the Nürburgring mainly because of the layout – it is a challenging circuit with flowing high-speed corners and an undulating track. I have special memories of driving here, not only from F1, but also from my Junior Formula days. At the European Grand Prix we will be testing the latest spec of Bridgestone tyre and an aero update package that we hope will help us in the medium to high-speed corners that require a lot of downforce and good car balance. The race is earlier in the season this year so we are unsure of how the weather will affect us, but the Nürburgring is a great circuit and always produces an exciting race so we are waiting for the weekend to arrive and to be back on-track again."
Yuji Ide: "Firstly, I would like to apologise again to Christian for what happened in Imola and I very much hope that he is ok. I am new to Formula One and have had very little running in the car, so I have been trying to drive safely and to improve with every race. For the European Grand Prix I have been studying the Nürburgring circuit very closely by watching videos of the past races and learning the race lines. I am looking forward to the race and hopefully will be able to show some improvements."
Aguri Suzuki, Team Principal: "As most people know, we have been busy preparing our new car, the SA06. As a result it would have been very hard for us to test last week with our limited resources, so we have decided to run a third car with Franck Montagny in Germany in order to collect more the data from SA05. We are happy to have Franck back with the team as his experience and knowledge will be of great help in addition to the valuable information fed back to us from Takuma and Yuji. Super Aguri will have a new aero package and Bridgestone tyres to test at the European Grand Prix, so we are looking forward to another challenging weekend."