The need for (more) speed

By Andrew Cutler
April 14 2007

Scuderia Toro Rosso made an early exit from qualifying at the Shakir circut as neither driver made it through to the second session. Scott and Tonio were both left to ponder the reasons why they couldn't quite come to grips with the STR2 today.

In a day that was once again dominated by Ferrari and McLaren, the boys from Faenza found themselves having to settle for 18th and 19th on the grid, with Tonio at 1:34.240 getting the better of Scott, who posted a 1:34.333.

Here are their post-qualifying comments as reported by F1Live.com:

Tonio Liuzzi


“We are just too slow at the moment and the car is missing a lot of downforce. Even if I have said it so often, this is partly due to the fact we need to do more testing to understand the car better. The car balance was good but track conditions had changed a lot since yesterday. Last week, Malaysia was more of a driver circuit where I could try and make a bit of difference, but here it is just down to the car.”


Scott Speed


“This afternoon was the first time today I ran the “Option” tyre and it felt quite a bit different. In general, it felt as though the car was more unstable under braking. The car balance was much better than yesterday, because the gap to Tonio has closed and I am running a similar pace to him, while yesterday he was quite a bit quicker than me. So we have managed to get the balance right but for whatever reason I was not happy with the rear of the car. This was not what I had expected.”