Rd.1 ST. PETERSBURG RACING REPORT BY MARCUS SIMMONS
Fifth place was a fantastic result for Takuma Sato at the start of his second season in the IZOD IndyCar Series. Not only did his performance around the streets of St Petersburg in Florida represent his best result since moving to racing in the USA, but it also came as a great tonic after the recent catastrophes in his homeland.
The earthquake and tsunami in Japan meant the spotlight was well and truly on Sato during the pre-season build-up, and meant that he was in the strong position of being able to do something to help. As a father of two, he has thrown his efforts into doing what he can to aid the children in the disaster-stricken areas.
“It’s a really difficult time for Japan,” he reflected, “and there are no right answers. It’s obviously devastating and it’s a hard time for Japan. I wanted to do something to help so we launched the ‘With you Japan’ campaign, and this is only a start. My plan was to collect all the drivers’ gloves from St Petersburg, to represent everyone helping Japan hand in hand. I specifically want to support the children who have had a difficult time.
“I plan to do an auction of the gloves, and although this won’t be enough we have to take everything step by step. Long Beach is coming in April and that’s a big event, then the Indy 500 in May – I want to do as much as possible. My head and my heart are in Japan, but at the same time St Petersburg was coming just around the corner…”
Like last year, there was very limited testing prior to Taku’s second season with the KV Racing Technology-Lotus team. He got two days at Barber Motorsports Park, following a shakedown, but he and 2010 team-mate EJ Viso at least arrived in St Petersburg with an additional KV-Lotus colleague, in the form of last-minute signing Tony Kanaan.
The addition of the 2004 IndyCar champion was a great boost to the team. “It’s fantastic news,” said Sato. “With Tony’s 14 years of experience in the States, his speed, his championship, his wins, he’s got everything. His experience is extraordinarily invaluable for us.”
Through practice and qualifying, Taku floated around the edges of the top 10. He was fifth fastest in his initial qualifying group (with the field split into two batches), which put him into the second-round 12-car session. Here he placed 11th, three places behind Kanaan.
“The team has improved,” said Sato, “but so have all the other teams! It’s a very competitive series so it was a question of who has improved the most. Also, the tyres have been modified so that again is unknown territory, and practice wasn’t enough to understand everything. At the beginning of practice one I was reasonably happy with the balance, but as the track got better we kind of lost direction gradually.
“Even more difficult for qualifying was a rule change that you can only use one set of tyres in each qualifying segment. Before, you could try things on the set-up on the normal ‘black’ tyres, then go onto the softer ‘reds’ to do a quick time, but now you’ve just got one shot on the reds. That’s OK if your set-up is good, but since we were a little bit struggling it was tough. It was difficult to get the balance right and although I was only a few tenths off it made a huge difference.
“It was a great help having Tony. He was front row at this track last year and brought so much to the team. All three of us – me, Tony and EJ – are working very closely and the results will get better and better.”
In fact, they already have started getting better, for the race ended with Kanaan third and Sato fifth. The early laps were plagued with accidents and caution periods, and another IndyCar rule change that on this occasion hampered Sato: the new double-file restarts. Taku was 11th at the beginning of the race, and vaulted to sixth while avoiding a multi-car shunt, but on the four early-race restarts he found himself on the outside of the double-file line-up each time: sixth, eighth, 10th and eighth. “It was extremely difficult to make up positions at the restarts from the outside, and in fact I lost many,” he said. “You already have a car beside you, and you just cannot do anything because there are always more cars inside. There was so much risk and all I could do was avoid incidents.”
When the race settled down, Taku ran 10th, hard on the heels of Danica Patrick. He then beat her in a drag race out of the pitlane at the first round of pitstops, during which he also leapfrogged James Jakes. After one final caution, Sato moved up to seventh when his friend Justin Wilson hit trouble. Then he hunted down Raphael Matos and speared inside the Brazilian into Turn 1 for sixth, just before the final round of stops. Here he leapfrogged Alex Tagliani to gain fifth. Although he made small gains on the group ahead, he then consolidated his position, fending off Tagliani for a morale-boosting result.
“It was an exciting race, and I overtook a couple of people on track. Last year we struggled a lot on pitstops, but the team worked really hard on this over the winter and they have done a fantastic job. It was a great team effort! To be in the top five is a great start to the season.”
Buoyed by this, Taku now heads for round two at Alabama’s Barber Motorsports Park in two weeks’ time. This is a sweeping road course, reminiscent of the circuits on which he cut his teeth in the UK, and one where he will be expecting to shine. “I don’t want to sound too optimistic after this result, because a few quick people got involved in accidents and you just needed to survive. But Barber Motorsports Park is a circuit that reminds me of Oulton Park. Last year it was where I got into the Firestone Fast Six in qualifying for the first time, so we are expecting to be competitive, and this time to challenge for a similar position to the one I got this weekend. The Open test there was not as smooth as we thought and there is still work to be done, but now we’ve got good experience from one race so I feel very motivated.”
