By Andrew Cutler
September 14 2007

Scuderia Toro Rosso's first trip to Spa did not get off to a good start for Vitantonio Luizzi. A chassis-bending shunt which cut his morning session short was followed by an as of yet unidentified rear-end issue that made his afternoon session even shorter.

Tonio would only manage 12 laps in the morning, with a best time of 1:51.628, 20th overall. The best of his 9 afternoon laps would be a slightly better 1:50.865, but this time would leave him last on the charts.

Sebastian Vettel would have a much less dramatic day, putting in some solid runs for someone who had never driven this circut previously. His morning time would be a 1:50.482, 16th best: his afternoon best was 1:49.720, 18th overall.

Here are their post-sessions comments:

Sebastian Vettel

“I did not test here for BMW in the summer, so this is my first time here in a Formula 1 car and the circuit seems very different to the way it did when I last raced here in Formula 3 and World Series. This is a bit faster! I like the track: Eau Rouge is very nice but my favourite is the double left, Pouhon at Turns 10 and 11. We did a lot of laps today so I think this was a good day. Unfortunately, Tonio was unable to contribute much data because of the problem on his car. As usual, it is hard to have a clear picture as we don’t know what fuel loads the others were running."

Tonio Liuzzi

“I started the morning with problems with the balance on the car and big understeer in the medium and slow speed corner. We had this situation for my first three runs. Then the session ended when the front locked up in corner 8, which put me off the track. At the start of the second session, it felt like I was in a completely different car as it had gone the opposite way to the morning, with the car feeling very light in the rear, but much more driveable. I had a strong first run, but on my out lap for my second run, I had to stop because of a problem with the rear end of the car, which we are investigating."