GP Belgium: Race
1. L. Hamilton, McLaren, 1:29:04.268
2. M. Webber, Red Bull, + 1.571 secs
3. R. Kubica, Renault, + 3.493 secs
10. V. Liuzzi, Force India, + 34.831
During the Belgian Grand Prix, Tonio made a great start from P12 on the grid and was running in ninth until his first stop on lap ten. He left the pits in 13th and gradually worked his way back up the field to close on the points.
However on lap 25 Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel, who had earlier become embroiled in several on track accidents, knocked into the side of the Italian and clipped his front wing. Tonio returned to the pits for a nose change and dropped down to 14th. When the rain arrived he pitted for extreme tyres and gave a spirited drive to move back up to 11th by the chequered flag.
After the race, Tonio moved up to tenth position following a post-race drive through penalty handed to Toro Rosso’s Jaime Alguersuari for cutting a chicane while overtaking Tonio at the end of lap 42. The penalty elevates Tonio ahead of Alguersuari and gives him the final point available. The result makes it a double points finish for Force India and gives it an 18 points advantage over Williams.
Tonio commented: “I’m really pleased to be back in the points again this race for the first time since Canada. We’ve always been pushing really hard so to get a point here, and to make it a double points scoring finish for the team, is a really good reward for all the hard work we’ve done over the past few weeks.”
“We had a good start but I suffered a lot of front and rear graining on the soft compounds early on and also some damage to the front wing. We decided to pit earlier and do a long stint with the hard tyres and it was a pretty good decision as we had a good pace on this set and were in P11, not that far from getting into the points.”
“But then Vettel tried to overtake me at the last corner and took my front wing off and that cost us points in this race. We lost more than 30secs changing the wing and without this I am pretty sure we could have finished higher. But the race pace was still good, the car has been consistent and better than it has been all weekend so we could be proud of that. I’m now looking forward to my home race in 15 days time in Italy.”
29 Aug 2010 | 
