Rd.3 ALABAMA RACING REPORT BY MARCUS SIMMONS
It’s a mark of the maturity of a team and driver that they can suffer from problems yet still gain a decent haul of points from a race and move up the championship table. Such was the case for Takuma Sato at Barber Motorsports Park, where he combined with the Andretti Autosport squad to bring the #26 Dallara-Honda to the finish in ninth place despite brake troubles, and moved up to eighth in the points. “It would have been nice to be near the top group, but after we had a few issues I’m still OK and happy with the results we achieved,” he said. “From a championship point of view it’s nice to collect a few good points and move up the standings.”
A “very productive test” at the Alabama track three weeks earlier put the team in confident mood heading to the race weekend. “A couple of years ago it was quite common that we had an Open Test at Barber,” said Sato, “but it was always cold because it was in February, and there was a lot of sitting time because even when the sun was out it was freezing temperatures. Also it’s like Barcelona F1 testing – temperature changes could mean the balance and performance are different at the race weekend so it wasn’t really representative.
“Our test three weeks ago was a lot warmer, and I was quite happy with the balance and performance. I was top of the timesheet in the morning and P6 in the afternoon, so I was quite excited for the weekend.”
Free practice on Friday wasn’t great though. “The 26 car had a little struggle on the first day,” said Taku. “It was a very hot day – hotter than usual, like summer! A nice day but the balance shifted away quite a lot from the test. Also we found an issue on brakes, and we found at the end of the day the material was very inconsistent. The pedal felt good but it was very difficult to modulate, which means you lock up often. You can’t set the car up on entry and at Barber there’s no chance of making up the lap time – if you don’t brake right, there’s massive understeer in the corner and snap oversteer on exit. But Marco Andretti’s sister car was quite competitive. That’s one of the luxuries of being in a four-car team: you can copy-and-paste on set-up and find the best way.”
For Saturday practice things were better, and brand-new brakes put Sato in a better mood. But what happened at the very end would impact massively on his grid position. Taku was 14th until Tony Kanaan put in a last-lap effort that knocked him down to 15th. With the qualifying groups being decided by alternate positions in this session, Sato was knocked into the odd-numbered positions, so in qualifying he would be up against Penske trio Will Power, Helio Castroneves and Simon Pagenaud, multiple champion Scott Dixon, 2017 series leader Sebastien Bourdais and ace team-mate Ryan Hunter-Reay. Talk about tough!
“That was unbelievable!” he said. “But I thought I’d got into the top six and into Q2, but at the very last moment Bourdais squeezed between Ryan and I. It was incredibly tight, we just missed little things.” Indeed, he missed the cut by six hundredths of a second, meaning he would start the race from 14th on the grid.
Sadly, the race-morning warm-up was rendered meaningless by rain – conditions Sato thrives in, but not preferable when you need to work on a set-up for an impending dry race: “We wanted to build a different car on set-up, because we were not satisfied on Friday, and Saturday was all about a qualifying car. So it was not very productive and we were going into the race in a quite unknown situation.”
Helpedtough. I started to lose grip as the rear tyres started to go – it was quite oversteery.
“Also from the first stint I had another brake issue – the car started to wobble when I hit the brakes. The right-rear brake went to sky-high temperatures. It was a similar problem to Long Beach, where it was the left-front that was finished. I had to move the brake bias quite a lot.”
Partduring which most drivers pitted for one last run to the finish, and Taku re-emerged in 12th place.
“Because were making my eyes and arms vibrate even after the race!”
That lock-up had seen Sato sail past Max Chilton into 11th place, only for Chilton to cut back and repass. Next time round Taku moved past the Englishman for 11th, then he took 10th when Charlie Kimball – who hadn’t pitted under the final caution – stopped for fuel and ninth when Power was forced to the pits with a puncture. “It was a good stint,” said Sato. “I had to protect my position from Hunter-Reay and then from Mikhail Aleshin, but I held onto it. A hard, long race: not the best result we wanted but solid performance.”
Also in Alabama was F1 star Fernando Alonso, who will join Taku and the Andretti boys for the Indy 500: “It was nice to see Fernando. He’s an old mate and every year we do the Honda Thanks Day in Japan and do karting together, which is always fun. I’m looking forward to working with him – it’s always fun with him; he’s a hard-charger but fair.”
Straight from Barber, it’s off to Phoenix for this Saturday night’s oval race. “Looking at last year our competitors were strong at Phoenix,” said Sato, “but I think Honda have made a big improvement. Phoenix is very challenging – incredibly challenging, and you’re consistently at 5g on cornering. But we had a test day and I’m hoping we can have a strong race.”
