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Italian GP: Thursday Press Conference

NEWS STORY
06/09/2007

Tonio, you have a new team-mate; have things changed much within the team?
Vitantonio Liuzzi: For sure, the atmosphere is a bit different in the team. Before, it was quite heavy, now it's changed a bit, it is a bit of a fresh air. Unfortunately for Scott, but Sebastian, the last two races, he was really welcomed by the team and there was a different air inside. He is young, he has to gain experience, he has to learn with the team and I think there was a bit of a difference inside and I think everybody saw this from the outside.

And in comparison, from a competition point of view?
VL: I don't think I have to say that everybody knows that obviously Scott had two years' experience. He was often giving me a hard and time, and Sebastian has to do kilometres for sure. He's really young and it was a bit easier to score points with the BMW and he's realised that. For sure, yes, he has a lot to do for next year.

What about yourself for next year, what are you hoping for?
VL: I'm working on next year, for sure. My aim is to stay in F1 because that's my target since I started racing and I want to show what I can do when I am in a competitive team, because unfortunately this year we had a lot of problems. But nothing is fixed. I think at the moment we are a bit on stand-by for the driver market and we still have to wait two or three weeks to know what's going on, but I'm working hard on it and I hope I get a chance.

And would you be happy to be a test driver?
VL: No, at the moment I'm focused just on (race) driving, because I think in the last two years we didn't have many chances to show what we can do because we were always in difficult conditions so I hope that for next year, if it happens, that I can stay in Formula One, if possible in a stronger situation, so I'm pushing hard to be a driver, one of the 22.

Mark, you're still having reliability problems; you must be feeling very frustrated about this year.
Mark Webber: Well, yeah, of course, the whole team is getting frustrated with it but all we can do is keep trying to press on and learn from the errors that we've made. It's not as painful when you're in good points-scoring position because I've had plenty of those in the seasons gone by as well. In Turkey we were not quick enough anyway to get in the points, so that saved me the hard work of driving around for nothing.

You have been qualifying well, very often in the top ten, you've outqualified your teammate.
MW: Yeah, I'm happy with how I've driven this year. That's been enjoyable to an extent but you can only drive round in that position for so long until you're not really enjoying it as much and your motivation suffers to keep pushing for P11, P10. It's so competitive. Giancarlo, Jarno, Renault, Toyota, it's hard (for all of us) to get in the points. That's the way it is now, so there's only one thing you can do about it and that's make a quicker car and be consistent with yourself each weekend to try and get the best job possible. If the car breaks, it's not my job – fortunately – to try and fix those problems and I think that we should finish off more strongly reliability-wise which wouldn't be hard. We did some tests here last week to try and simulate why my failure probably happened in Turkey and it didn't happen again, so that was that reason out of the window. We're getting more information.

What about the changes to this circuit that the GPDA requested? Are you happy with them?
MW: Monza's always on the edge. We are travelling at high speeds here, no question about it. The first chicane's fine. The second chicane is... every time you go there... I didn't see the run-off until the second day because I was lucky enough to make the apex most times but I had a look on one of the in-laps after I finished a run, I actually drove across it and had a look, and the asphalt is not bad, because obviously we've seen that it arrests the car, plus it doesn't trip the car up on the gravel and things like that, which is one of our biggest worries for the second chicane, and Ascari. If we spend any time, like we saw with Lewis in Nürburgring, not really in contact with the gravel, you lose a lot of the ability to arrest the car. Parabolica is also on the edge. If you have a failure there you can probably go in pretty hard. That's Monza, it's very difficult for us to make progress here because the guys – meaning the FIA and the people here at Monza – have tried their best to slowly chip away with it but it's probably the most dangerous first lap that we do on the run to the second chicane here, it's probably one of the most dangerous if not the most dangerous first lap that we do in the season, if it's in dry conditions.

Jarno, your feelings on the same subject?
Jarno Trulli: Well, I already expressed my feelings and I feel it's quite positive what Monza circuit has done. Obviously, as Mark says, we travel at very high speeds here, so it's obviously a little bit an unsafe circuit compared to the others, but this is due only to the speed, not because of the run-off areas. I think Monza has been working very hard every time and now we are definitely happier than last year.

Now it's obviously your home Grand Prix; you've twice qualified fifth, raced to fourth in 2002. What are your feelings about your home Grand Prix?
JT: Well, I always loved Monza for the atmosphere as well as for the track. I have always been very competitive, so I hope to have another good weekend, I especially hope to bounce back in the points because at the moment I'm a little bit frustrated by the last few races. Due to the circumstances I was unable to score points, so I'm really hungry for that, and I shall really go for it this weekend, because I believe we had a very positive test last week, the team is pushing really hard and is improving the car, step by step, so from now to the end of the season we really want to get it right.

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