Liuzzi and Speed Feel F1 Heat
Scuderia Toro Rosso Could Have New Driver Lineup in 2008
Scuderia Toro Rosso has zero points after nine F1 races. Drivers Vitantonio Liuzzi and Scott Speed could be replaced in 2008 by Sebastien Bourdais and Sebastian Vettel.
Prospects appear bleak for Vitantonio Liuzzi and Scott Speed to retain a race seat with Scuderia Toro Rosso in Formula 1 after this season.
It seems STR is moving toward a driver lineup of the Sebastie/ans – Sebastien Bourdais of France and Sebastian Vettel of Germany – for 2008.
STR entered F1 in 2006 after Red Bull, the energy drink company, purchased the Minardi F1 Team.
Scuderia Toro Rosso, which means Team Red Bull in Italian, is owned 50-50 by Red Bull and former F1 driver Gerhard Berger. It is the “junior team” of Red Bull Racing (RBR).
A lovable loser, Minardi competed in F1 from 1985 to 2005 and scored only 38 points. The team never had a driver win a race. The highest finish was fourth.
For 2006, STR signed Liuzzi and Speed as race drivers. Liuzzi served as a test and race driver in 2005 for RBR. He scored one point -- an eighth-place finish in the San Marino Grand Prix.
In 2005, Speed competed in the top feeder for F1 – the new GP2 series, finishing third in the driver standings – and served as a Friday test driver for RBR during three F1 race weekends.
Speed raced in GP2 and before that lower formulae with the financial backing of Red Bull. Speed was a past winner of the Red Bull Driver Search, a program aimed at placing an American driver back in F1 that ran from 2002 to 2005. Speed won the competition in its first year and went on to become in 2006 the first American to compete in F1 since 1993.
Little was expected of STR in 2006. Liuzzi scored the team’s only point, finishing eighth in the United States Grand Prix. He had the upper hand in the intra-team battle over Speed, who nearly had a point-scoring finish in his third race. Speed finished eighth on the track at the Australian Grand Prix. But he was penalized one position and classified ninth for passing the Red Bull driven by David Coulthard under a yellow (caution) flag.
Heading into 2007, up was the only way for STR to go, or so it seemed, as the team switched to the Ferrari V8 engine. But after nine of 17 races, STR has zero driver and constructor points. Speed has come closest to scoring a point, finishing ninth in the Monaco Grand Prix.
However, Speed has finished only three of the nine races. Of his six retirements, three were crashes, two were technical failures and the other was a tire failure.
Meanwhile, Liuzzi finished only the first two races of the season, with his highest position 14th. He has retired from the last seven races – four technical failures and three crashes.
In F1, it is produce or else. Thus, it was just a matter of time before Liuzzi and Speed were called out by their employer.
According to an article posted the Web site Planet-F1 on Tuesday, July 17, “Toro Rosso team boss Franz Tost has urged his drivers to up their game if they hope to remain in Formula One next season.”
Later in the article, which was based on an interview supplied by STR, Tost said, “They need to improve. So far, it has been difficult for both of them to get the most out of the car, especially in qualifying.”
Contract ‘Option’ with Bourdais
If that was bad, an article posted on the Web site F1Live, also on Tuesday, July 17, was worse. Liuzzi or Speed could be out for 2008 in favor of Sebastien Bourdais, the three-time defending driver champion of the Champ Car World Series.
The article says that according to the German magazine Auto Motor und Sport, “STR has taken out a contract ‘option’ on Bourdais…and it runs out at the end of July.”
Also in the article is a quote from STR’s Berger. “He has my support. Bourdais has done everything right, which is exactly what we expected of him. He has exactly the right attitude for the job.”
Bourdais evidently impressed STR during the test at Spa-Francorchamps, the home of the Belgian Grand Prix, which ran from Tuesday, July 10, through Thursday the 12th.
Said Tost, “On his first attempt, he (Bourdais) was as fast as our current drivers, and he made not a single mistake.”
Bourdais’ best lap was faster than that of Liuzzi. Speed did not drive in the test.
Bourdais drove on Wednesday and Thursday, recording his best lap on Thursday -- 1 minute, 48.585 seconds. Liuzzi drove on Tuesday, recording a best of 1:49.179.
Vettel Has Mettle
Sebastian Vettel, the test and reserve driver for BMW Sauber, is a hot commodity in F1.
Substituting for the injured Robert Kubica, Vettel scored one point by finishing eighth in the United States Grand Prix in June. In doing so, he became the youngest point scorer in F1 history at 19 years and 349 days of age.
A scenario that neither STR nor BMW Sauber has denied has Vettel being “loaned” to STR where he would occupy a race seat in 2008 and maybe 2009 as well. There is an issue the teams may have to resolve. Vettel, who turned 20 in July, reportedly is contracted to BMW and STR, with both claiming priority on his services.
Berger likes Vettel. According to the article on F1 Live, Berger told Auto und Motor Sport, “The boy impresses me. He has brains and the right attitude for the job – and that is half of everything you need.”
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