Liuzzi Hits at Qualifying Traffic in F1

Vitantonio Liuzzi had a decent season with Force India so far, as the Italian scored points in 50 percent of the races completed until now and sits only 2 points behind teammate Adrian Sutil in the overall classification. However, no one could argue against the fact that his China outing was a total fiasco, from qualifying to race.

The first shock came on Saturday, when the Italian failed to get past the Q1 and was trapped in 18th place on the grid. That eventually brought him a sudden DNF on Sunday, as he lost control of his car while in traffic and crashed out his VJM03 in the very first lap. Writing for ESPN F1 after the race, the Italian hit out at intense traffic in qualifying, which blocked his way past Q1.

Additionally, he called out to the F1 stewards to be more vigilant on this issue. As of this season, the stewarding system in F1 has changed a bit, in the sense that a former Grand Prix driver is assisting the team of stewards at each race.

“For the third time this year I got stuck in traffic during qualifying and that ruined my lap,” noted Liuzzi. “We really need to look at the problem of slow cars holding others up, because in the past the stewards used to be quite vigilant about this. This year they seem to let it go a lot more but it is like the referee's decision in football, you cannot argue with it.”

“Maybe in the next few races I will put police lights on my car, because it seems every time I go out in qualifying nobody sees me coming in their mirrors,” added Liuzzi, while insisting that this problem will only get bigger on tighter tracks (street races in particular).

“There is no quick fix to this problem but I think drivers need to use the mirrors more and the stewards need to clamp down on those that don't. For sure, me and my team will look at why it keeps happening to us and we will do that starting at the next race.”