Tonio Liuzzi

- Published on Dec 3rd, 2010 by The Badger

Life Before F1

A Red Bull junior not long after he left karting, Liuzzi raced various F3 categories before settling in Formula 3000 in 2003. He was solid in his first year and spectacular in the second, taking seven wins and nine poles in ten races for Christian Horner's Arden team. Made his F1 debut the next season, but wasn't full time until 2006 and was out again for 2008. Dabbled with Speedcar and A1GP during his F1 exile.

F1 Career

Liuzzi made his F1 debut in 2005, sharing the second Red Bull seat with Christian Klien. Well, we say sharing - Tonio actually did just four races to Klien's 15 - but he did grab a point in his first race and was a shoe-in for a seat with the new Toro Rosso team in 2006.

This was a largely difficult season, with just one point (at the U.S GP) though he was retained for 2007. Again there was little pace in the car, and when he did score a good result - sixth in China - new team-mate Sebastian Vettel totally outshone him by coming home fourth. With Vettel assured a drive and four-time Champ Car champion Sebastien Bourdais on his way in Liuzzi was out in the cold at the end of the campaign.

In 2008 he took the third driver role at Force India and was promoted to a race drive when Giancarlo Fisichella departed for Ferrari. He held on to the seat for 2010 but endured a less-than stunning year. There were bright spots - only Alonso and Hamilton were more impressive in Korea - but there were too many shunts and Q1 exits. He was ultimately well beaten by team-mate Adrian Sutil and subsequently dropped in favour of tester Paul di Resta.

For 2011 he switches to Hispania, partnering India's Narain Karthikeyan at the Spanish squad.