Takuma Sato drove an impressive qualifying laps to claim eighth place on the grid for Sunday’s 73-lap United States Grand Prix at Indianapolis.

His lap was made all the more impressive by the fact that the Japanese driver had to run early in the session following his retirement in Canada last weekend. The team had also made a big set-up change to Taku’s car prior to his single-lap run and, despite the low-grip track conditions being far from ideal, he extracted the maximum from the BAR-Honda.

Morning practice had been spent helping tyre supplier Michelin with its investigations into Friday’s problems, with the team insisting that Taku complete his laps by running through the pit-lane instead of the final corner.

　 "It was a little bit difficult for me today because I used a different set-up in qualifying from this morning's practice. We needed to find a lot of speed after the Friday practice, so we decided to go different ways with the car this morning. I had a relatively good qualifying lap, but we suffered a little with straightline speed. However, I am hopeful for a good performance from the car tomorrow."

　 Takuma Sato got his United States Grand Prix weekend off to a positive start at Indianapolis, completing his planned programme for the day and finishing the two hour-long sessions in 16th position.

Taku spent the day fine-tuning his BAR-Honda 007’s set-up to suit the mix of a long, main straight and the twisty infield, as well as carrying out tyre evaluation work. The Japanese driver is using the same engine that he raced in Montreal last weekend but, with the latest-spec Honda V10 having mileage to spare after Taku’s brake-related retirement in Canada, was able to complete a higher-than-normal lap count in practice.

　 "It’s great to be back at Indianapolis, where we had such a good result last year. Free practice has been pretty smooth for us. We didn’t have any problems and we were able to complete the tyre programme and set-up work that we had planned. We still need to do a lot of work to become more competitive, but I hope we can make good progress from here."