Q & A with Tonio Liuzzi

Now the Force India driver is setting his sights on another points finish, even if he is aware that tomorrow's race is going to be difficult.

AUTOSPORT heard from the Italian after qualifying.

Q. Not a bad qualifying. Could have been better, but could have been worse I guess, you had a small mistake on the last lap?

Vitantonio Liuzzi: Yeah, we had a problem suffering from locking in the last lap - we locked in Turn 1 - but overall Q3 was the target of this weekend so we can be happy about it. It has been a bit of a crazy qualifying again. You have to be always in the right spot on the track at the right time so it didn't work completely 100 per cent as we wanted, but we have to be happy that we are in Q3.

Q. For the race tomorrow, would you like a bit of rain to maybe help you?

VL:: I think that tomorrow again I have a good chance to score points but I don't think we can expect to have a completely clean race. I think that tomorrow will be another crazy day like today in qualifying so we will have dry, rain, full monsoon, everything. It will be changing a lot during the race. So it's always about being in the right spot, with the right decision on the choice of tyres. The starting position is pretty good and now we have to try and optimise everything.

Q. Are you good at making calls yourself from the cockpit? Can you say "I want to do this, I want to do that" like Mark Webber today?

VL:: Usually, yes, but today I wasn't 100 per cent [sure]. I was 80 per cent the intermediates [for Q3] but there wasn't time to change the tyres so we didn't try it. To go out in a blind gamble like Mark did is always a question mark. It could have worked, it could have not worked. It did it for him. It was a good call at the end of the day but usually, yeah, I like to do these kind of calls during the race to judge when the track is good for dries, inters or full wets. That's what will make the race more exciting and it can basically turn in our direction.

Q. If the conditions are bad tomorrow and there is rain, will you be looking maybe at trying to take some risks on the strategy in the hope that maybe you can get right up to the front?

VL:: You have to in this case because if you are too conservative in this kind of crazy conditions you never achieve results so you have to be a bit of a gambler. That's why I think you need to be in the right spot at the right time. It's a positive thing for tomorrow's race. I think we struggled a little bit with our set-up with the full wet tyres. We were much faster on intermediate tyres, so we have to try to judge the right things during the race.

Q. How would you assess the start to your season so far? Two races, two points finishes so are you happy with the progress so far?

VL:: I think there is not much to say; we had a great result the first two races. We wanted to score points and we achieved a really good target. Seventh place has been a pretty good thing for the team. The team did a really good job during the winter and we confirmed that we had a good speed in winter testing and we confirmed our speed at the track. It has been a really perfect beginning of the season. Now we have to try really hard to continue in this way because other teams are not sleeping - we have to bring development if we want to continue this way.

Q. Are you feeling as confident as you've ever felt in Formula 1 at the moment?

VL:: Definitely, I think I can still improve a little bit in qualifying myself, but overall we had a really strong result - no mistakes - a really well handled race from me and from the team's side. I think we are a strong combination and I'm a great believer that this year we can achieve good results.

Q. Do you like driving in the wet in these conditions?

VL:: I like it because in the rain the driver can do a bit more than the car, so for sure you need to feel comfortable and confident of the car but most of the time the driver can make quite a big difference.