Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing
IZOD IndyCar Series
QUALIFYING NOTES/QUOTES – Saturday, July 21, 2012
SATO EARNED HIS BEST QUALIFYING POSITION OF 2012 OF FOURTH FOR THE
POLE: Ryan Hunter-Reay 1:17.2338 / 103.664 mph (Group 2; Time set in Round 3; 10-grid penalty)
4th: Takuma Sato 1:17.5526 / 103.238 mph (Group 1; Time set in Round 3; fastest in R2)
TAKUMA SATO, No. 15 Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing Dallara/Honda/Firestone: “I really enjoyed qualifying. It’s a fantastic result for the team. The boys are working really well together. After a couple of difficult races, I’m really pleased to be back in the top-six. It was a good qualifying session. We were absolutely happy with the balance in the practice session but still we made good progress and showed good performance in Round 1 of qualifying. And then of course, Round 2 was my favorite. I was actually grinning under the visor because I love to drive in the wet so much! I had absolutely no problem in Round 2 and wish we had wet qualifying in Round 3. But never the less in was a tricky situation in Round 3. Some of the people maintained a full wet setup on the car with dry (slicks) tires. Some people maybe tried a partial dry (condition) setup. And some, like me, went out first because of the weather prediction and some people, like the pole sitter, waited until late. There was a little gambling going on. Still, to qualify fourth was an outstanding job by the team. I’m very pleased to start on the inside on the second row which is a great place to start here. Now we are in the best place to try to avoid the confusion going into Turn 1, which is extremely tight, on the opening lap. The farther front you start the better chance you have of having a clean race so I’m particularly pleased with that. Whether it will be dry or wet in the race, we know that we will be competitive. Having my best start of the season will hopefully transfer into my best result of the season so far.”
· FAST FACTS: This will be Sato’s third race in
GERRY HUGHES, Race Engineer for Sato: “We had a productive practice session this morning and we were able to show our true potential in terms of lap time on new tires at the end of that session. We made a couple of small changes going into qualifying. It was our first time in Round 3 and the conditions were constantly changing through the first two sessions. We managed to put it all together and Takuma did a very good job to get into Round 2. Obviously it was nice to be quickest in the wet although fairly unrepresentative conditions. We saved a good amount of tires for the race tomorrow and we will try to give him a good race car to ensure we can capitalize on our great grid position.”
SECOND RACE IN
NEXT UP: Morning warm-up will take place tomorrow from 8:00-8:30 a.m. MT and the Edmonton Indy will take the Green Flag at 12:47 p.m. MT. Timing and Scoring information is available for all sessions from www.indycar.com. The Edmonton Indy will be televised live on NBC Sports Network at 2:00 p.m. ET Sunday, July 22.