Vitantonio Liuzzi knows a thing or two about being typecast. Five years ago, he arrived in F1 as a walking embodiment of the Red Bull philosophy: hip, quick and bling. In his first race, the 2005 San Marino GP, he qualified alongside team-mate David Coulthard, overtook Michael Schumacher into Turn 1 and scored a debut point – as well as setting the fifth-fastest lap. Here was a new star in the making: individual off the track, impressive on it.
Tonio Liuzzi has never achieved the results to match his glitzy image and undoubted potential. But in 2010, he must prove he can perform on the biggest stage of all…
But then the second Red Bull seat was handed back to Austrian Christian Klien at mid-season, and Liuzzi spent two lacklustre years at Toro Rosso under the stern management of Gerhard Berger and Franz Tost. F1 spat him out onto the sidelines, writing off his individualism as a lack of commitment. It didn’t matter that he’d matched new wunderkind Sebastian Vettel during the German’s debut races in late 2007. Tonio came down to earth with a bump.
“It was a really big lesson,” concedes Liuzzi with a rueful smile. “I realised that, in the end, speed was not enough. If I finished with the Red Bull world, it was not because of speed but other reasons. And waiting for a year and a half on the side (as third driver with Force India) gave me the hunger to know everything I wanted: not just to be an F1 driver, but to be a winner.”
What we have before us today is Tonio Liuzzi version two: he’s had a major costume change for his new role as a full-time Force India race driver. He’s understated and sports a strangely sensible side parting. It’s a concerted effort not to make a statement.
“Somehow, it helped,” he admits when asked if he needed to change his garish image in order to change opinions. “In a way, I learned that if you work as a banker, you cannot go to work in tennis shoes. Before, I was a bit too relaxed when I was going to work. Now, I’m much more mature and I know how to make it work. I’m born for a new life.”
The tricky thing with Tonio Liuzzi is deciding whether he’s actually good enough to occupy a prized seat in a team that’s going places. He was a karting prodigy and a dominant 2004 F3000 champion. However, in 44 F1 starts, Liuzzi has scored just five points. Time isn’t standing still, either – at 28, he’s only a week younger than double world champion Fernando Alonso. Even his qualifying record is inconclusive: he’s out-qualified his various team-mates 23 times to 22 (including the race at Indianapolis in 2005 that he never started), but that record is skewed by a season and a half alongside the ill-named Scott Speed, who he dominated 18-10. The rest of his teammates – David Coulthard, Sebastian Vettel and Adrian Sutil – have beaten him 12 times to five.
Put this to Liuzzi and he immediately reaches for the racing driver’s book of excuses. “For the period with David, it was under the single-lap qualifying system when the last driver ran first. In Imola, I was side-by-side with him; I passed him in the race, passed Michael and finished eighth. Then I crashed in Barcelona, so I qualified first in Monaco, and that killed my remaining races. I was never slower, but with this qualifying system it wasn’t paying off. When I was team-mate to Vettel, I never had a problem competing with him…”
In that respect, he has a point: the two split qualifying honours evenly in their eight races together at the end of 2007. Vettel marked himself out as a star of the future in the wet of Fuji and China; at the latter, he hauled the Toro Rosso to fourth position in a wet-dry race. Each time, he ran ahead of his more experienced team-mate. But when Liuzzi is asked to rate his own best performances, it’s slightly surprising to hear him pick the same two events…
“I’ve never had a really competitive car in normal conditions, and wet races were always our chance to show better performance. In Fuji, I started last from the pitlane and finished eighth [this became ninth after he was demoted a position for passing under yellow flags]. In China, I was sixth. I had some back luck both times, but they were races where I never gave up, had a good qualifying and gave more than 100 per cent in difficult conditions.”
Again this holds true, but only so far. In Japan, his fastest lap was 1.6 seconds slower than Vettel’s and he was blown away in qualifying. In China, he had a two-stop strategy like winner Kimi Räikkönen but was still beaten by Vettel on a one-stopper after the German started six places behind him. It’s a record that, in parts, suggests greater potential than his results show. Exactly how much is hard to say.
Former Toro Rosso boss Gerhard Berger ran out of patience while searching for the answer, saying last year of Liuzzi: “We spent too much time discussing his mistakes. He’s physically not fit enough, and he’s not committed enough, but from the talent side Tonio could do something.” Was it this accusation of a lack of commitment that he felt he had to address with his more understated approach?
“No, never,” comes the firm reply. “Those words came out of people’s mouths sometimes but since the beginning, I knew what I wanted and I gave more than 100 per cent to achieve it. Things were said that were pretty difficult for me to swallow and my time at Toro Rosso was not easy because the team were leaning towards other decisions on the driver side. It was like there was a loaded gun and it was too easy for people to shoot at me. I’m a different person now; I’ve learned, and I don’t want to hear these words any more. I don’t think they came from the mind. It was just a guy shooting the bullet.”
It’s hard to decide whether Liuzzi is being admirably robust in self-defence or flirting with delusion. The repeated talk of giving ‘more than 100 per cent’ sounds naïve and lacking in self-criticism, given that it only leaves room for the car to be deficient. But a drive like his first Force India outing in Monza last year, when he had the composure to qualify in the top ten and run in the top four after eight months out of the car, suggests real promise – even if it has been delivered inconsistently. How did he assess his five races in late ’09?
“Seven out of ten,” he replies. “The car was competitive, but I had not raced for a year and a half. After that, we struggled more but we had some really great, aggressive races. I was pretty strong compared to Adrian but I still needed to get back to the usual Liuzzi speed, and that’s what I’m really looking forward to in 2010.”
He didn’t decisively out-perform Sutil, who is himself something of an unknown quantity, but neither could he be expected to after so little running; the jury is therefore still out on exactly how well he performed in objective terms. But it was enough to convince Vijay Mallya that Tonio deserved a full season in 2010.
Although Liuzzi concedes there were weaknesses in consistency, as well as the impression he created in the paddock, he never once hints that he has questioned whether he’s ultimately got what it takes to succeed. It’s no surprise that he believes he can do it – every driver does – but it is unusual that he hasn’t asked himself the question, after the many setbacks of his F1 career. It may also be a little remiss.
You have to wonder how much of this is down to his continued prowess in go-karts, where he previously beat F1’s great and good, and still does in informal contests. Karting, after all, is the ultimate leveller and proof of driving talent and that makes it something of a psychological release: if he can match F1’s best drivers in karts, surely he’d be able to do the same in cars, if only the equipment were right?
“Between all the drivers, we know our pace in karting and in cars,” he says. “The mentality of the racing is similar and I think you see the driver’s real mind come out: sometimes you want to do things too quickly. In F1, you risk breaking a front wing so you have to find the right moment, but in karting, you can touch and try to overtake.”
That ‘real mind’, and the real playing field between the drivers, clearly matter to Liuzzi; the proof of his ability, away from the muddying influences of F1, leaves him safe in the esteem of his peers with whom he regularly karts during the season. But will it be enough to establish him as a permanent presence on the F1 grid?
Looking towards the new season, Tonio has nothing but optimism. “We’ll have a wild first five laps of the race,” he enthuses about starting on full tanks. “On Saturday, you will stop with the feeling of a low-fuel car, then on Sunday you will be going to the first corner with 160kg of fuel onboard. There will be some crazy starts.”
He is conscious, too, of the need to perform on the big stage, after his brief run as an understudy in late 2009. He hopes the new rules will favour him over Sutil because of his preference for a neutral to understeering car – a balance that should help preserve the rear tyres with heavy fuel loads. And he sees himself and Force India as being at a comparable stage in their development.
“I think I’m growing up in a similar way to the team,” he explains. “I must show my maturity, and show that my past experience in F1 has made me better. For the team, too, it is important to create this continuity in our results.”
Most of all, though, he cannot afford to waste what may be his final opportunity to make an impression in the sport. By his own admission, he misjudged the environment last time round, pigeon-holed by his desire for self-expression rather than liberated by it. Now, Liuzzi seems genuinely determined not to let this chance slip through his fingers and to revel in what he enjoys most about being an F1 driver. “It’s the adrenaline of doing something that, in normal life, is not possible,” he says with a little of the old twinkle in his eye. “I love to live on the edge.”
For five years, Vitantonio Liuzzi has lived on the edge of F1 itself, creeping in then slipping away. This is the year for him to move away from that edge, towards the established middle ground. It’s a move he’s made with his image, but he now needs to back it up with ability. If he can’t, he risks seeing the lights go out on his dream for good.
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