By Andrew Cutler
April 13 2007

For Scott and Tonio, it's still about learning what the STR2 wants. While the late start with the new car has put them behind the curve in relation to rival teams, both drivers feel that progress is being steadily made. While Ferrari ran off and hid from the rest of the field during the two pratice sessions at the Shakir circut in Bahrain today, Scuderia Toro Rosso gave everyone a very pleasant suprise when Vitantonio Liuzzi racked up the 8th fastest time in the morning run. Lap times would get better for the STR boys in the afternoon session but, with everyone else improving as well, they settled back into more "customary" slots on the time sheets. Tonio would be the 17th fastest driver with a time of 1:35.268, and Scott would find himself 20th with a time of 1:35.687.

Here are their post session comments as reported by F1Live.com:

Tonio Liuzzi


“A good day overall, with no big problems on the car. We worked mainly on evaluating the different tyres to see which to choose for qualifying and the race. I am quite happy that the car seemed to respond very well to all the set-up modifications we made. Also, our pace was quite good today, which means we have made a little bit of progress since last weekend. But the big step won’t come until later so the important thing this weekend is to get as many kilometers as possible under our belt.”


Scott Speed


“The car definitely feels more competitive than it did when I drove it here in the pre-season test, but that’s only to be expected. More importantly, the car feels more competitive than it did last week in Malaysia. That’s great news, as we did not really expect that. Now we will have to see if that stays true for the rest of the weekend. We have made a lot of changes to the car set-up since last weekend. We are chipping away and learning more and more about the car, so this has been a useful day.”