Takuma Sato has revealed he had brake problems during the Grand Prix, which made for a difficult race. Sato explained that on the formation lap, he realised there was some problem, however there was no time for them to be fixed and so finished the race with the problem.
“On the way to, and also on the grid, I felt the brake pedal had gone rally soft and I clearly had a problem, but at the time, there was nothing we could do,†Sato explained. “I tried to warm up the car on the formation lap and then the front brakes caught fire when I got back to the grid and there was a lot of smoke, which I was really worried about it.
“I didn’t have a good feeling about the brakes, but into Turn One I was able to make up some places. My front brake was really fading and I was struggling with the car as it locked the rear wheel a lot. I couldn’t stop because the front didn’t have any bite and as a result I lost a few places.
“The safety car then helped me to cool down the brakes and they came back to reasonable level. After that I was able to recover my race, overtake a few cars and push my way through. On the last stint the option tyre came into reasonable grip and I was able to do a good lap time, but overall it was a tough race.”
Team-mate Anthony Davidson put in another solid performance, despite incurring some damage to his car on the first lap, to finish in 14th place.
“After a reasonably good start everyone was fairly well behaved into Turn One, but Vettel made contact with the rear of my car which damaged the diffuser,” Davidson explained. “The car seemed to be quite good on a heavy fuel load and I was able to challenge Wurz in the Williams and also Fisichella. I then overtook him when he made a mistake round Parabolica and we had a good fight, which was probably the highlight of my race.
“Then, as the fuel loads came down, I think that we just struggled for speed a bit and it was hard to keep the faster cars behind me, but I managed to hold off Ralf in the Toyota right to the end, so I am happy enough with that.”
