Toro Rosso's Vitantonio Liuzzi has accused
Takuma Sato of compromising his race, after the two had a coming together at the start of Sunday's Malaysian Grand Prix.
The incident occurred going into turn 4 and the net effect was that the Italian had to pit to get a new nose fitted to his STR-02. Although he battled on after and set some good lap times, it was always going to be tough and he eventually finished 17th overall, 1 lap down.
"I think it's a shame that Sato pulled a crazy move at Turn 4 and compromised my race, as everything was going well,” said Liuzzi. “But I collided with him and then that meant I also touched [my team-mates] Scott [Speed]'s rear tyre and had to come in for a new nose. A shame, as I felt my race pace was really strong and we could have done a lot better in terms of the final result.”
Despite his disappointment though - and Sato for the record felt that he had been left with no-where to go - Liuzzi was happy with his lap times relative to Melbourne.
“The positive point is that we have improved our pace since Australia and for the next race we can be a bit more optimistic," he added.
Speed meanwhile finished 14th overall, and like Liuzzi reckons that they should be able to go better in Bahrain next weekend.
"That was a tough race and I've got a lot of blisters on my braking foot as the pedal was very hard to push. But the car seemed to be a bit more competitive than we had expected,” noted the American.
“The guys worked very hard over the past couple of weeks so I am just glad for them that I was able to bring the car home and finish the race. We learnt a lot this weekend and I think we should be able to perform slightly better in Bahrain."
