Overall lack of grip for Liuzzi

Tonio Liuzzi had a frustrating weekend in Turkey as he suffered with an overall lack of grip but after qualifying a disappointed 18th, he progressed up to 13th. We asked him about the weekend in Turkey and the upcoming race in Montreal.

Q: Turkey was obviously a frustrating weekend overall. How did things go in the race?

I tried to push hard at the beginning of the race, but our pace was pretty difficult to keep up. I had a good start but then Hulkenberg pushed me into the dust at the second corner, and I lost a couple of positions. Then after that we had a clean race, and the pace was as we expected. I finished P13, which is not a bad result starting from P18, but it’s not where we should be. In the first three or four races we had the pace and finished in the points and we deserved to be there. And now we are struggling a lot more.

Q: What’s the problem that you are having at the moment?

Basically we had the same problem as Barcelona – there’s a lack of grip overall. We cannot put load on the rear tyres. I struggle as if the tyres were cold. We were a bit more optimistic after Monaco because even if the problem had not been solved completely, we found a way to go around the issue. But Istanbul is a proper track with a lot of high speed, medium speed and low speed, so you need to find a compromise. And in fact we were struggling like in Barcelona.

Q: What are your thoughts on Canada?

Canada is always another crazy race like Monaco! I had a difficult first year in 2006, but the next year I was running fourth. I was behind Kubica when he crashed and I hit debris, so later the suspension broke and I went in the wall a few laps from the end. But at the moment I don’t want to make a prediction because we have got some work to do before we go.

Q: Is it a track that you enjoy?

Overall I like it and I’m pretty fast there. It’s always an exciting race. Hopefully they have solved the problem with the surface, which broke down last time. I think if the car behaves well I could be in good shape because I’ve been fast there in the past.

Q: Top speed is obviously important – do you think the car could be quick?

We did a really good job at the factory with the new SRW [Force India name for the F-duct], which seems to work very well. I used it in Istanbul, and Adrian didn’t. It seemed to be pretty effective, and it helped me a lot in the race for top speed. So we are pretty optimistic that it will be a big factor for Montreal. From my side for sure finding the grip is the biggest key, especially because of all the slow corners.