Broken Suspension Almost Penetrated Liuzzi's Foot in Brazil

It's usually some of the most meaningless motor racing crashes – if one can call it that, as long as they're not spectacular – that tend to become the most dangerous. Of course we could give you a long list of examples, but we feel that mentioning the way Felipe Massa almost lost his life during last year's Hungarian Grand Prix is enough.

And now we turn out attention to Force India's Vitantonio Liuzzi, the Italian whose strange and unprovoked accident in the recent Brazilian Grand Prix led to the only Safety Car of last Sunday's running. According to the racer, it seems that a cracked suspension rocker caused his impact with the tire wall at the end of Turn 2. What's more shocking though is the fact that he was close to losing his foot in the process.

Apparently, a piece of the suspension penetrated into the monocoque and ripped his racing boots. An inch or two was the margin for which Liuzzi now has to be grateful for still getting to drive an F1 car.

“We thought at the beginning it was a pushrod, but then they realised it was a rocker that got cracked and fell apart in Turn 2. We have to understand what happened, and it must have been a quality problem or something like that,” explained Liuzzi.

“It was actually a big crash and I was lucky I was not injured, as a piece of suspension came through the monocoque. The part made a hole in the front left of the car, so we have had to change the monocoque. It also touched my foot, but stopped just enough to break my shoes - although not my foot.”

As his chassis was destroyed beyond repair in Brazil and because the race in Abu Dhabi was only one weekend away, Liuzzi was handed the No 2 chassis for the season finale, a car that was only used by Force India during the winter testing this year.