Practice Session Struggles

By Andrew Cutler
September 7 2007

After a fruitful test at Monza just last week, the gang from Scuderia Toro Rosso no doubt had hoped that today's Italian GP weekend pratice sessions would showcase the results of their recent labors on this famed track. It was not to be, however, as the team struggled to make the cars perform.

Sebastian Vettel and Vitantonio Liuzzi would be mired near the bottom of the time charts today, as both fought to find a good balance on the STR2. Vettel would have the 'better' day, posting 20th in the morning and 18th in the afternoon, with a day's best time of 1;25.439. Tonio would be last on the field in the morning session, but make it to 20th in the afternoon when he clocked in at 1:25.567. In both sessions, the boys were around a full three seconds off of the leader's pace! 

Here are their post-sessions comments:

Sebastian Vettel, Toro Rosso (18th, +3.073s):
“We were quite happy with the early runs this morning, but after that the day seemed to get more difficult. Of course the track conditions are very different to last week when we had quite a good test session here. That was actually my first test session in this car and certainly, every lap helps. But now we have to concentrate on this weekend and hopefully we will be able to work out what to do to get more pace out of the car.”

Vitantonio Liuzzi, Toro Rosso (20th, +3.181s):
“Overall this was a very difficult day. Since the morning session we had a problem with the car reacting strangely in the corners, with a bit of an imbalance between right and left turns. We never found the right set up despite changing several things on the car. I continued to struggle in the afternoon, when I also had an electrical problem which meant I had to stop before the end and before doing a run on new tyres, so we are lacking a bit of data.”