Vinantonio Liuzzi is still angry at Toro Rosso co-owner Gerhard Berger claiming that it was his fault that Liuzzi was left without a drive at the end of last year.
Liuzzi drove for Toro Rosso during the 2007 season however a disagreement with the management saw his contract dropped with the team signing Sebastien Vettel and Sebastien Bourdais for the 2008 season. Liuzzi eventually found a race-seat with Force India, although he claims that he had plenty of offers of drives on other series.
“I have alternatives,†Liuzzi claimed. “A new NASCAR team offered me to race in the Busch series, I could have had a couple of Champ Car tests, but I preferred to concentrate on the Force India programme, even if only as a test driver – that’s because the potential of this team is big, and I count on being back in a racing role in the medium term.
“After all, if I found myself without a drive at the end of 2007, it was most of all the fault of Gerhard Berger, who has never been a fan of mine, just like Adrian Newey, who in the past blocked my arrival as a regular Red Bull driver.
“F1 is a strange world, where the way you’re perceived can change very quickly. When I won the F3000 title everyone was looking for me, they’d say I was the driver of the future, but things later turned for the worse. Let’s not forget that Toro Rosso is not Red Bull, but it’s rather Minardi with a new ownership. I’m sorry to have left the Red Bull orbit most of all for Dietrich Mateschitz, who has always believed in me. I can’t say the same about others.”
“Now it’s important for me to give my technical help to Force India – now they work in three wind tunnels, while there wasn’t the money to even work in one beforehand. My role is a proper test driver one, as is de la Rosa’s at McLaren and Badoer’s at Ferrari.
“But I can’t hide from the fact that I want to get back to racing. I’ve received a proposal from Peugeot to race in the 24 Hours of Le Mans. It interests me because in 2008 I nevertheless want to keep myself in the racing spirit, I don’t want to just test. But for 2009 I accepted this role most of all because there are concrete possibilities to get back to be a proper race driver.”
