GP China: FIA Thursday press conference

Q: Tonio, a really difficult start to the season. How has it been?
Vitantonio Liuzzi: “You said the right word, difficult, really difficult, but we knew that from the beginning. Everything started really late. We are building the new car for this year so we knew we would not have an easy start. We went to Australia with not one kilometre in the new car and basically the first kilometre was done in qualifying so I think the result was not too bad, at least is was a step forward from last year.”

“We understood just a bit, doing seven laps in Australia but I think we went to Malaysia with more understanding about the new car. We showed a much stronger result. For sure we have to still work hard and the team is pushing a lot. Already here we have some upgrades. We will have some more for Turkey so everything will be better. The team starts to work much more professionally so everything is going in the right direction.”

Q: Do you think you can get on terms with the other teams that were new last year?
VL: “I think we will be close in this race. We will close the gap even more in the next few races. The car and the team are growing. The developments should be coming soon so it will depend also how other teams will react in these next few races. Virgin is the closest team with whom we have a gap who we could fight. Lotus made a big step forward but our intention is to grow more and more this year and to put the right basis for a proper 2012.”

Q: Is the 107 per cent rule something that you think you can get through every single time?
VL: “I think it shouldn’t be a problem any more. In Australia it was a problem as we did not have a kilometre in the car so we did not know what to expect. In Malaysia we were well under the 107 per cent and Malaysia is maybe the toughest circuit for that kind of problems. We are planning to improve the car soon and every race so we hope that we don’t face any more that issue as we want to fight closer and closer with our competitors and be ahead of them soon.”

Source: Formula1.com