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Sato upbeat about Foyt’s prospects for remainder of 2016

Takuma Sato says the fifth place he scored in Toronto was a positive but he has more reasons to expect improvements over the remainder of 2016.

Takuma Sato, A.J. Foyt Enterprises Honda

Takuma Sato, A.J. Foyt Enterprises Honda

IndyCar Series

Takuma Sato, A.J. Foyt Enterprises Honda
Takuma Sato, A.J. Foyt Enterprises Honda
Takuma Sato, A.J. Foyt Enterprises Honda with A.J. Foyt IV
Takuma Sato, A.J. Foyt Enterprises Honda
Takuma Sato, A.J. Foyt Enterprises Honda
Takuma Sato, A.J. Foyt Enterprises Honda
Takuma Sato, A.J. Foyt Enterprises Honda
Takuma Sato, A.J. Foyt Enterprises Honda
Takuma Sato, A.J. Foyt Enterprises Honda
Takuma Sato, A.J. Foyt Enterprises Honda
Takuma Sato, A.J. Foyt Enterprises Honda

The AJ Foyt Racing driver, now in his seventh season of IndyCar racing, described his third top-six finish of the season as “an amazing result after a difficult qualifying session” but is focused now on stepping up the team’s pace on natural road courses.

Sato told Motorsport.com: “Those four laps under yellow [the final full-course caution at Toronto] helped a lot, because without that, I would have had to reduce even more my speed, so I would have made it to the end but maybe lost a couple positions.

“But we made a good call, a good gamble. It was a really good race, a lot of fun, and very important result because we had a tough season.”

The AJ Foyt Racing-Honda cars have notably fluctuated in pace over the course of race weekends, with promising practice sessions for both Sato and teammate Jack Hawksworth often being followed by a fall down the order come qualifying. Partly this can be explained by Chevrolet “turning up” its engines for the crucial session, but Sato says there are issues beyond that.

“Our difficulties are because the series is so competitive,” he said. “The big teams come to tracks and have a setup approximate to where they need to be. We have lack of testing so we sometimes have a lack of fundamental understanding.

“We have great engineers so we bring the car out of the box very competitive, but then the track changes and we sometimes lose speed [relative to the competition], because we don’t know how the changes affect the car.

“The aero package has changed 2015 to 2016 so every time we go to a track it’s kind of new-ish and we have to go through everything again.

“OK, we have two cars but some of the teams we fight with have four cars and so they learn the package at the track quicker than we can. And they have windtunnel time, too. So keeping up with them is difficult. They start a weekend already one or two steps ahead of us. And if you have half a second from top five to last five, little differences make a big difference, and that’s very difficult. Competition is very high.”

Road course progress

Nonetheless, Sato expressed optimism for the three road courses on the remainder of the 2016 schedule, at Mid-Ohio next week, and then Watkins Glen and Sonoma in September.

“Yes, we should be good,” he said. “We’ve made steps since Barber. Historically, you think we will struggle at Mid-Ohio but we had a very positive weekend at Elkhart Lake, and it had been a long time since we performed really well at a road course.

“We are often good at street courses," added the 2013 Long Beach winner, "but struggle at road courses because the tire construction and grip distribution is very different and we’re working so hard to make it work and before this year, it failed.

“But this year we brought a quite new philosophy, and it succeeds.

“I love road courses, especially Mid-Ohio. Makes me think of tracks I raced on in England like Brands Hatch, Oulton Park! When I first came to IndyCar in 2010 with KV Racing, we qualified well at Mid-Ohio, but since then it’s been a struggle.

“Hopefully we’ll do really well. The test at Mid-Ohio [tomorrow] gives us an opportunity to see what’s what.”

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