Monaco: Thursday practice

By Andrew Cutler
May 24 2007

It was something of a yeoman's day for the Scuderia Toro Rosso gang today on the streets of Monte Carlo. While the times posted by Scott Speed and Vitantonio Liuzzi were not spectacular, the duo did get alot accomplished and feel that they are now well prepared for the qualifying session.

Scott would run at a fairly consistant pace through the two practice sessions, posting a time of 1:18.967 in the 1st and then bumping it up just a notch to 1:18.233 in the 2nd. Tonio would have some mechanical issues in the morning which kept his best time to a 1:19.285. He would knock a full 1+ second off of that in the afternoon with a time of 1:17.898.

here are their post session comments:

Vitantonio Liuzzi, Toro Rosso (16th, +1.958s):
“Overall, a decent day's work. I had a problem this morning with the throttle pedal that wouldn't return fast enough and that meant I spent too much time in the pits. This afternoon, although I then had a brake pedal that was too long, we did manage to do plenty of laps, which is especially important at this circuit and we got the car set-up to work well with a good balance from the chassis. That will be useful for qualifying for which I am quite optimistic, as it is always different to any other session of the season.”

 Scott Speed, Toro Rosso (18th, +2.293s):
"The most important thing on this first day at Monaco is that I didn't hit the wall! We have some new parts on the car since the Ricard test, that went quite well and I'd say the car is now turning in much sharper, which is useful around here. Now, I just need to find some more pace on Saturday."

Meanwhile, team co-owner Gerhard Berger was admitting to the press that the sqaud form Faenza is not yet performing at the level at which they all had hoped to be by this point in the season. He laid the "blame" for their lack of pace relative to Red Bull Racing, which is using the same Newey-penned car, to the lack of infrastructure, a legacy of the Minardi days.

"We are not Minardi any more, where all they did is participate," he explained. "Our expectations now are completely different."