Liuzzi, Speed both finish after early incident

By Andrew Cutler
April 8 2007

The Scuderia Toro Rosso teammates had an all-too-close call in the opening lap of the Malaysian GP; courtesy of Takuma Sato, according to Tonio. Nonetheless, both were able to soldier on and pick up the team's first double finish of the season.

Scott Speed would come out of the incident realitively unscathed, but other issues would plauge him during the race as he brought his car home in 14th. Tonio would need to make a pit stop for a new nose on his STR2, and then bring it home in 17th, ahead of Robert Kubica's BMW Sauber.

Here are their post race comments, as reported by F1Live.com:

Scott Speed


"That was a tough race and I've got a lot of blisters on my braking foot as the pedal was very hard to push. But the car seemed to be a bit more competitive than we had expected. The guys worked very hard over the past couple of weeks so I am just glad for them that I was able to bring the car home and finish the race. We learnt a lot this weekend and I think we should be able to perform slightly better in Bahrain."


Tonio Liuzzi


"I think it's a shame that Sato pulled a crazy move at Turn 4 and compromised my race, as everything was going well. But I collided with him and then that meant I also touched Scott's rear tyre and had to come in for a new nose. A shame, as I felt my race pace was really strong and we could have done a lot better in terms of the final result. The positive point is that we have improved our pace since Australia and for the next race we can be a bit more optimistic."


Franz Tost


"Tonio had quite a good race, but unfortunately, a collision meant he had to pit for a new front wing. After that, his lap times were quite promising and he performed very well in the first two stints. In the final stint, he was behind Davidson and was unable to get past. Scott had some understeering problems in the first stint and after the settings were changed at his first stop, he went a bit quicker, but he was not able to match Tonio's pace. Both cars saw the chequered flag, which is encouraging but there is still a lot of work to do."