The fiercely competitive nature of the IZOD IndyCar Series means that, just because you’re a hero and narrowly miss out on victory in one round, it doesn’t mean you’re automatically going to be up at the front at the next.

Takuma Sato and the Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing team were reminded of this at Mid-Ohio, where they struggled for ultimate pace with their Dallara-Honda all weekend and had to be satisfied with 13th place after a tough race full of battling.

At one stage, indeed, Taku was fighting Helio Castroneves, the man who beat him to victory at Edmonton two weeks earlier, for 18th place. How quickly fortunes can change…

“I’ve always enjoyed driving at Mid-Ohio,” said Sato. “For the previous two years I had always been up at the front, and we had big hopes, particularly after Edmonton. The team had good momentum and also this race is very special for Bobby Rahal as he is the Grand Marshal of the 2012 Honda Indy 200 at Mid-Ohio. And with his American Le Mans Series team racing as well it was a big weekend for the team that I was hoping would be very positive.

“We had a test last week at the track, where we weren’t necessarily happy with the balance or the speed. We went through a number of things, but we were lacking time to go through the whole test programme, especially as half the day was lost because of rain.

“So we had to continue the test programme in free practice one and two, but we never found enough speed and we had a balance issue too.”

Sato went ninth in his qualifying group. He was less than a tenth away from being in the top six and going through to the next round, but then again so were three other drivers… “It was an incredibly competitive session, as always at Mid-Ohio. I did everything I could but just missed out by a little bit. We were getting closer as we went through the sessions but we are never satisfied – particularly when we were so competitive two weeks ago.”

So Taku would start 17th on the grid, promoted one from his qualifying slot due to a penalty for Castroneves. Any chance of trialling some more developments in the warm-up was lost due to wet weather, although he was fifth fastest. “The warm-up was delayedbecause it was raining,” said Sato. “We knew we had to work to get more speed and stability through the prime tyre, so we changed the set-up overnight. But we lost the chance to see how it would work in a dry session. I was hoping it would stay wet for the race, but unfortunately it was dry!”
The start of the race was unbelievably close, Taku fending off his ex-team-mate Tony Kanaan for 15th but running only a very short stint until his first pitstop. “The rain left a lot of mud on the track, and it was incredibly low grip, cars were sliding all over the place so that was why we were so close.
“This race was very difficult to achieve with a two-stop strategy. To do that you would need to save a lot of fuel, which would not be good from where we started. A lot of people planned for three stops and so did we. I started on the prime tyre to see how it was going, but then we decided after only a couple of laps that I would come in early to get onto the alternate tyre so I could go as fast as I could.”

With this being the second successive IndyCar race to pass off without a caution, the strategy didn’t make much difference. Sato spent most of his race battling in the teen positions, enjoying fights with Graham Rahal and Giorgio Pantano.

“I had a little struggle with the balance, especially the initial couple of laps after the pit stop it was difficult to make any pace. I could overtake cars that were coming out of the pits on cold tyres, then when I was on cold tyres I was overtaken. There was a lot of passing so that was quite exciting, but there was not quite enough speed and I gained only a few positions.”

There was also a three-into-one moment at Turn 4 with Pantano and the struggling Ryan Hunter-Reay, who had mechanical problems and was being lapped. “Unfortunately we all met at the same point at the apex. Giorgio was on the inside, I was trying to avoid Ryan and I got sandwiched and had nowhere to go. There was contact with Ryan but no damage.”

Taku spent the final laps of the race behind Josef Newgarden in the train, but unable to pass. “It seems like the alternate tyre had good grip at the beginning,” he said, “but there is some degradation as we all know, and by the end there was very little difference between the alternate and prime tyres.”
Next up is Sonoma, the IndyCar circus swinging west to California, where it will race in three weeks’ time. “We’ll be having a Sonoma test next week,” said Sato. “It seems we are struggling a little with our road-course package – we haven’t been very competitive at Barber Motorsports Park or Mid-Ohio. The tyre construction is different this year, so we need to find some good speed on that for the road courses. Sonoma is a great track and I always enjoy driving it, so hopefully we can find something.”

TAKUMA SATO
“It was a tough race. It was a big weekend for us and everyone really worked hard but unfortunately we didn’t have the pace that we needed. We started with the balance in the stint. It looks like such a narrow window for the sweet spot. It was a little better in the middle stint but we lost the grip in the end. We overtook a couple of people but also lost some places. In the end we got a couple of positions which was good but it was not enough. I look forward to the Sonoma test so we can get a better understanding of the road course configuration.”

JAY O’CONNELL, Technical Director
“Takuma did a good job today. We elected to use a three stop strategy because of our starting position and that worked out fairly well; we did move up in the end. We need to work on our performance coming out of the pits on new tires and try and get down to that quick pace right away. Once we got going on each set of tires, Takuma was very competitive running quicker than the leaders and closing on them but there weren’t any yellows today to help us with that strategy so in the end we moved up just four spots but Takuma had a nice drive. We look forward to testing some alternate setups at Sonoma to try to improve our road course car for the next race.”

TAKUMA SATO
“I’m disappointed in the qualifying result especially since I like the circuit and had a good record the past two years here. It’s a shame that we didn’t have good speed to go to the next stage of qualifying. The field is very competitive as usual in Mid-Ohio. We made good progress so we made a big improvement from the practice session. Our lap time delta is really ramping up but it wasn’t enough to progress to the next stage. It was only a couple of tenths but we needed a little bit more. We will take the experience from qualifying and the practice sessions and continue to work on it tomorrow.”

GERRY HUGHES, Race Engineer for Sato
“Whilst it was disappointing not to progress into the second qualifying session, for ourselves I think this weekend illustrates to us that clearly we have a better race car than a qualifying car. We need to take something away from the first two practice sessions and qualifying itself and learn from that. We need to ensure that we give Takuma a good car tomorrow for the race. We will build on what we have learned in the two practice sessions and hopefully we’ll have a better result for the end of the race than we have seen in qualifying today. I think that whilst it was an improvement in terms of what we’ve been able to achieve so far this weekend, clearly there is much further to go in terms of being able to progress from Round 2 into Round 3. Tomorrow will be another learning experience for us in terms of giving him a good race car and learning more about the tires on these road courses.”

TAKUMA SATO
“We continued our work list from last week’s test. So many things were left due to the weather. We came here with some changes and over the course of the practice we tried a number of things. The track was a bit different. Initially it was quite greasy, low grip which is typical Mid-Ohio. And it was quite rapidly rubbered down so after the first half of the season the track was getting pretty good. We couldn’t make the most of our potential. We tried different things but I was struggling with the balance a bit. We will go through the data and continue to work on that.”