Karting specialist Liuzzi won the FIA Karting championship in 2001 and three years later became the last-ever Formula 3000 champion.
He entered an unusual drive-share arrangement with Christian Klien at Red Bull in 2005 but only got four race starts as Klien impressed.
For 2006 he got a full-time slot at the new ‘junior’ Red Bull team, Toro Rosso. In a solid debut year he marked himself out as a strong qualifier, often dragging the Toro Rosso through to the second stage of qualifying, and put a surprisingly bold pass on Michael Schumacher at Melbourne.
He was retained for 2007 and although the team struggled with reliability Liuzzi lost his seat for 2008 to Sebastien Bourdais. The Italian became a test driver for another new team, Force India.
In 2009 he appeared for Italy in A1 Grand Prix, and was later called up to Force India’s race squad at the Italian Grand Prix to replace Giancarlo Fisichella.
Despite being drafted in at short notice Liuzzi drove well at Monza and beat Sutil in the last race of the year. The team decided he’d done enough to keep his race seat for 2010.
Leave a Reply