Montagny laments lack of running

Super Aguri's third driver managed just seven laps in the morning after he was hit by a gearbox problem.

His afternoon, however, was better, and the Frenchman covered 24 laps on his way to the 10th quickest time of the day.

"We had a lot of problems today unfortunately," said Montagny. "This morning I could only do a few laps, which is quite frustrating when I come to the circuit and I only run for two hours over the whole weekend. In the afternoon we also had a little problem on the car which did not allow us to complete our programme but we could complete our tyre programme.

"I'm quite happy with the lap time and for the team because this is the first time the car is in this position and I believe the race will be okay.

"But still I have a little bit of frustration because I would like to do some more laps, more running and more testing, but I'm quite happy because the guys did a good job today."

Japanese teammate Takuma Sato enjoyed a less troubled day, but finished down in 26th position, one place ahead of Sakon Yamamoto in the third SA06.

"The team has done a lot of work since the last Monza test and it was good to see how the car had improved today," said Sato. "As a team we encountered a few problems, but I had a quite trouble free day and completed our required programme.

"It was very good to see the running of the third car, which has collected important data from the tyres and has shown very good performance and what the car can do. Obviously we will continue to work on improving the set-up for even better performance tomorrow."