Liuzzi explains hard tyre struggle

Vitantonio Liuzzi said his lack of pace in the British Grand Prix was because he wasn’t able to get good performance out of the hard tyres:

It was pretty upsetting because we don’t know what happened with the first set of tyres. With the hard tyres at the beginning we had a huge amount of understeer, and I couldn’t drive to the apex every time, it was really washing out.

And suddenly once we changed to the soft tyres it was another world. We were able to push, we had a really good pace, and we were able to catch our competitors. I caught the group of Adrian [Sutil], Nico Hulkenberg and Michael Schumacher without any problem, and I was also keeping Fernando Alonso behind.

When we went to the soft tyres I went down with the front wing and the car was balanced and was good. It was a shame because even with the soft tyre we struggled with a lack of top speed, which we’d had since the beginning of the race. We lost a few kph on the straight, and we don’t understand why, but we have to analyse it.
Vitantonio Liuzzi

While team mate Adrian Sutil has scored points in all of the last six races, Liuzzi has only made it into the top ten twice, something he intends to change at the Hockenheimring next week:

It’s not as linked to downforce as Silverstone, so maybe we should be more competitive and with a better pace. We have to try to score points with both cars to be back in the fight. In Silverstone I was close, but we knew it was not a track for our car’s best characteristics.

I think Hockenheim will be better for us, but we still have to work hard and bring some developments. It has a very flat surface, or it did when we were last there two years ago! So you can use a much stiffer set-up, a much lower car.

I grew up in Germany in F3, so I really like it, and I drove quite a bit there. So I’m looking forward to it. I think we could be in a strong position.
Vitantonio Liuzzi

Compare Liuzzi and Sutil’s lap times: Force India race review

2010 British Grand Prix