Redemption!

By Andrew Cutler
September 15 2007

After enduring a dismal Friday, and in spite of having been sick for the past few days, STR's Vitantonio Liuzzi put in a solid performance during the Saturday morning practice session. Then he backed it up by making it into the second round of qualifying.

Tonio upped his (few) lap times from yesterday by nearly three seconds in the morning session, posting a best lap at 1:48.163. He would then knock just over a full second off of that time with a 1:47.115 during his Q2 run, good enough for 15th spot. Thanks to a ten place grid penality assesed to Robert Kubica from the BMW squad, Liuzzi will actually line up in 14th tomorrow morning.

Sebastian Vettel would also have a very solid day. His morning practice times would improve over yesterday, with a best lap at 1:47.838. He would pick the pace up just a bit more during qualifying with a lap at 1:47.581, but it was just shy of the mark needed to reach Q2. Vettel will start the race from 17th spot.

Here are their post-qualifying comments:

Vitantonio Liuzzi:
“After a nightmare yesterday, with very few laps because of a problem on the car, it went much better today, resulting in me getting through to Q2. I had found it difficult to get the right balance on the car so we were expecting a difficult Saturday. Fortunately, everything went fine, except that I am not feeling that well and have been sick a lot. I think we did a great job in qualifying to get ahead of a Williams which I am sure is a quicker car. We could not have achieved more than this.”

Sebastian Vettel:
“It's a shame not to make Q2 by just a few thousandths of a second. My best lap was okay. I lost the rear end a bit going down the back straight and that cost me quite a lot of time. We have improved the car since yesterday and I think we have made a step forward. Now we will have to look at the strategy to see what we can do. Of course the plan is to try and have a good race tomorrow.”

Giorgio Ascanelli, Technical Director:
“The final outcome in terms of position is much the same as usual, with the difference that today, none of the big guns had troubles, which is a good sign. So, although the numbers are the same as ever, compared to our best performance, which was Canada, today we delivered a much more solid performance. I think we did some very good work on the car, even if we didn’t put it all together in the end. No regrets, but realistically, no real reason to expect anything much better than usual tomorrow in the race.”