By Scuderia Toro Rosso
September 27 2007

Normally, a relatively small and new team like ours can expect to get the occasional lucky break and pick up some points along the way. However, Scuderia Toro Rosso, although making some progress is having a tough time in a year where everyone has upped their reliability levels.

Both our cars finished today’s high speed dash around the Monza track, but unfortunately so did everyone else except David Coulthard and Felipe Massa. Vitantonio Liuzzi would finish in 17th, one spot ahead of team mate Sebastian Vettel.

Here are their post-race comments:

Tonio Liuzzi:
(STR2-03)
Pos. 17th

“The most positive thing from this weekend is that we saw the chequered flag again. In the race we did not have enough pace to get ahead of the cars in front. From my point of view I had a good race, although I had a bit of understeer in the first stint, which cost me a lot of time. My second stint was quite strong. Our pace was not too bad after we improved the car on Saturday morning, but in qualifying we did not get the most out of the car. We struggled to stay with other cars when we were in their slipstream as I really lost a lot of downforce when I was near to other cars. All we can do now is to look forward to trying again in Spa.”

Sebastian Vettel:
(STR2-04)
Pos. 18th

“My start was okay and then I saw David coming up my right hand side, which forced me to go round the outside and then in the second chicane, unfortunately I ran into Davidson. It was partly my fault. I was happy the Safety Car came out as I didn’t lose too much. But later, I had a big problem with the brakes and we will have to find out what caused it. I was hardly able to stop the car and at this high speed track you need to have confidence in the brakes. Today was a bit frustrating, after I had a good day yesterday.”

Gerhard Berger, team co-owner:
“It was unfortunate that Sebastian lost his wing on the first lap. All we could hope for, given our grid positions, was to take advantage of the Safety Car or other retirements as we were not quick enough to overtake other cars. The good thing about the weekend is that timewise, if you look at the lap times between Webber in ninth place and ours in seventeenth, there is not an enormous difference. We still have to improve, particularly in terms of qualifying better and then that will give us a better chance to do well in the race.”

We now have four more chances to get points, starting immediately next weekend at Spa Francorchamps, as the F1 circus returns to Belgium after a one year break. Time is tight and even though Scuderia Toro Rosso is based only a relatively short drive away from Monza, the trucks and cars are heading off directly to Spa from here, without calling in at home.