#Vitantonio Liuzzi

[lewisarchive]

Sir Lewis Hamilton at the Amber Fashion Show (2009-2010)

[chasingseb]

[f1-2008-season]

New day new team composition, welcome to our third team composition analysis

Today: Force India

1st drive - #20 Adrian Sutil

The Austrian driver who moved to Spyker, now renamed Force India, will retain his place for this season. Seeing as the team isn't set to really improve and that Sutil is still fresh meat, many expect mediocrity from both him and the machine.

2nd drive - #21 Giancarlo Fisichella

Not much can be said about the ex Renault driver that hasn't been already said. Fisico is regarded as a mildly successful driver, although quite unlucky. Each move either made his former team better, or his current team worse. Will his third stint at the once-named-Jordan team prove any better?

Reserve and test drive(s): Vitantonio Liuzzi

[iceman7raikkonen]

[distantlaughter]

THE SECRET NICO ROSBERG (IN HIS KARTING DAYS) TOLD BY DINO CHIESA

originally written by Luca Barnaba for TKART magazine 5 March 2022 (x)

The 2016 F1 world champion as you've never seen him before. Through the anecdotes (which are about destroyed hotel rooms, prostitutes and much more!) of those who knew him well, before he became a star.

After winning the Formula 1 world championship in 2016 and retiring from racing at the end of that same season, Nico Rosberg has shed his driver's shoes to take on those of an entrepreneur-influencer. In recent years, the former Mercedes driver has been involved in a variety of areas, such as promoting projects aimed at environmental sustainability, creating teams that participate in international electric racing series (such as the Rosberg X Racing team in Extreme E), and posting vlogs, track analyses, and stories on social media and about his life and memories. In short… About what Nico Rosberg is today, one really knows or can know everything.

But to know who Nico Rosberg was before F1, world triumph and fame, one has to rely on the stories of the people who saw him grow up and take his first steps in karting, people who know him well, like few others. Dino Chiesa is one of them. A prominent figure in the world of karting, founder of Kart Republic, over the years he has been manager and mentor to some of the promising, later to become undisputed stars, in karting and beyond, including: Alex Zanardi, Vitantonio Liuzzi, Lewis Hamilton and… Nico Rosberg himself.

Of Nico's karting period there are several "stories," especially about the emergence of the friendship-rivalry with Lewis Hamilton (another phenomenon of that generation), but very little is said about who (and how) young Nico was.

It is Dino Chiesa himself who reveals: "I remember him as a child, perhaps smaller than others his age. In the sense that he was more innocent than other peers: 'mannered,' polite." Kids, you know, at 10 to 12 years old begin to develop their character, on and off the track. And, basically, they divide into two groups: those who are less…mischievous and those who…are a little more so. If of Nico we can safely say that he fell into the former, his friend and teammate at the time, Lewis Hamilton, just as quietly we can say that he was part of the latter: "I have an episode that explains how Nico was, even compared to Lewis. I picked them up at the airport. When we arrived in Padua, before dropping them off at the hotel, we passed through a street where there are several prostitutes. Nico, naively, asked me 'What are those women doing there'. And I, considering that he was only 13 years old, replied 'They are waiting for the bus.' Nico did not reply. After a few seconds, however, Lewis said 'Can I take the bus tonight?'"

The genuineness of Nico's era, goes hand in hand with his goodness, which, according to the manager, could also be a flaw, especially when it related to races and competitions, although "Like all good people," Dino Chiesa recounts, "he later bursts."

"And he goes further, erring twice. The first time because out of his goodness he suffered. The second time because by blurting out he then overreacts."

If the portrait of little Rosberg you are getting from these stories looks a lot like a blond angel, know that it is not so. Even Nico - as a teenager - had a chance to show himself reckless: "One morning," Chiesa says, "he comes to the track before the race, makes me promise not to say anything to anyone, and shows me a wound on his foot. I ask him, 'How did you do that?' He said, 'Lewis started hitting me with pillows last night. I responded and we ended up throwing mattresses at each other outside the window of our hotel room. To avoid getting caught by my father and you we went to get them back only to climb over a net…I cut my foot!' I couldn't bring myself to scold him!"

A "naughty" little boy, like many others, then. Unlike many, however, Nico had to handle an unusual challenge early on, that of carrying a "heavy" last name on his shoulders: "Certainly having a father like Keke must not always have been easy. Every time, especially as a child, the comparison was automatically triggered, even though Nico was someone who never abused his surname and did not seek advantages just because he was famous.

"Indeed, as I know him, he is someone who would even go and sleep in a 2-star hotel without necessarily needing to have the suite. Also because, to be honest… He is someone who is very careful about spending."

His distinguishing features over the years have not changed: "For me he is still Nico, the kart guy. He hasn't changed. As he was then he is now, so much so that we talk very often by text or phone. And I for him, in my opinion, am still the one in the kart, his boss. So much so that he still calls me 'boss' today." Also because in his interpersonal relationships he has always maintained that good dose of genuineness: "He's not one of those people who has to have his friends who are soccer players or who are stars. If there is a need to go for a bike ride to train, he even goes with his neighbour."

Impossible, however, to talk about Nico Rosberg without putting his innate talent under the magnifying glass: "I put him among the best in the dry lap! In behaviour, however, he is a gentleman. One of those who does no improprieties, never over the top. Fast, but correct. Not a common thing." But his strong point was undoubtedly working on the kart and finding the best set-up: "He was The Best. In the sense that he was the first to do the dirty work, to prepare the material, to do whatever was necessary to develop chassis and engines."

[coimbrabertone]

Star Wars and Motorsports - A Surprisingly Intertwined History.

I actually had this blogpost planned out for a rainy day - I thought about maybe doing it for May 4th, 2025 as a Star Wars Day thingie - however, today, James Earl Jones passed away at the age of 93. I knew him as Darth Vader and Mufasa, but he played a lot of roles and provided a lot of iconic voices, others may know him from the Sandlot, Coming to America, or dozens of other roles over the years.

Rest in peace.

In his honor, I'd like to do my little part, so...a discussion of the long and intertwined history of Star Wars and motorsports.

The first relates to Darth Vader himself, as a dark and imposing figure, was associated with Dale Earnhardt in NASCAR. Yup, known as the Intimidator and as the Man in Black already for his iconic black and gray GM Goodwrench #3 Chevy, Dale Earnhardt was also nicknamed the Darth Vader of motorsports a few times in the 1980s and 1990s.

The black helmet and sunglasses played into that.

Somewhat more substantively, there is also the world of Star Wars sponsorships in racing, with Pepsi and Lucasfilm teaming up to sponsor Jeff Gordon at the 1999 CarQuest Auto Parts 400 Busch Series race at Charlotte Motor Speedway, promoting Episode I: The Phantom Menace. Gordon would suffer a mechanical failure...which is probably for the best because it had Jar-Jar on the left rear quarter panel.

Fast forward to the 2002 Coke 600, also at Charlotte, and Lucasfilm tried again, this time teaming up with Cheerios to sponsor John Andretti in the #43 car in the Cup series. This was the big leagues, and with them backing a midpack car, fifteenth was actually a respectable finish.

For Revenge of the Sith in 2005, the marketing campaign was back in force. First things first, there were four NASCARs that year, starting with both Yates Racing cars at the 2005 Subway Fresh 500 at Phoenix. Elliott Sadler drove the M&Ms #38 with a Dark Chocolate themed Dark Side paint scheme, while his teammate Dale Jarrett had a UPS/Milk Chocolate M&Ms Light Side car. The Dark Side car had Darth Vader, Boba Fett, and a Stormtrooper on it. The Light Side car had Anakin Skywalker, the green M&M with Princess Leia hair, and a C3PO M&M.

Pretty odd character choices for Revenge of the Sith but eh, it's all for fun. Anyway, Sadler finished 11th and Jarrett finished 23rd, so I guess the Dark Side won...which I suppose is appropriate, given the movie they're tying into.

So, at the very next race, Star Wars tried again. Teaming up with Jeff Gordon and Pepsi again, this time it was in the Cup Series, sponsoring the Hendrick Motorsports #24 at the Aaron's 499 at Talladega Superspeedway. This car, with Yoda on the hood, would go on to win the race in dominant fashion, leading 139 laps.

Jeff Gordon would also pose with Darth Vader and some stormtroopers ahead of the race, which seems like a conflict of interest given the Yoda car.

Fallen to the Dark Side, Jeff Gordon has.

Finally, Hendrick Motorsports got another Star Wars car, with Episode III sponsoring Kyle Busch's #5 at the amazingly named Chevy American Revolution 400 at Richmond. This Kellogg's car was Mustafar themed with a lava theme on a black base. It has Darth Vader and Mace Windu on it, which...neither is exactly a great fit for Mustafar, what with Windu being dead and Vader only gaining the iconic armor and red lightsaber because of the events of Mustafar.

Kyle finished fourth, another good result for Star Wars.

This wasn't all though, because at the 2005 Monaco Grand Prix in Formula One, Star Wars teamed up with Red Bull Racing to sponsor a car. Much like the Kyle Busch car, it was their regular livery with some orange-yellow Star Wars lettering and a lava/fire theme along the bottom.

Drivers David Coulthard and Vitantonio Liuzzi also got a Star Wars photo op to go with it, this time taking pictures with Darth Vader, two stormtroopers, Chewbacca, C3PO, and also George Lucas himself.

A few years later, at the 2008 Peak Antifreeze Indy Grand Prix at Sonoma, the third to last round of the 2008 Indycar Series, Lucasfilm and Blockbuster (lol) teamed up to sponsor Marco Andretti's #26 car. He would finish fourteenth on that occasion.

This was actually the second collaboration between Marco Andretti, Blockbuster, and Lucasfilm that year, as he actually drove an Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull car at the 2008 Indianapolis 500, finishing third.

More recently, at the 2023 NASCAR Championship Race at Phoenix, Star Wars and Columbia Sportswear teamed up to sponsor the 23XI cars. Bubba Wallace in the #23 ran an X-Wing car and even had Mark Hamill appear in the unveiling commercial, while Tyler Reddick in the #45 ran a TIE Fighter car.

Bubba Wallace finished 10th, and Tyler Reddick finished 22nd.

Two Light Side versus Dark Side races at Phoenix, the Dark Side drew first blood but then the Light Side won most recently. We're gonna need a tiebreaker.

So, that's what I got in terms of Star Wars sponsorships, but that's always been Star Wars going into motorsports. How about motorsports going into Star Wars?

Well, believe it or not, there is an example.

Podracing.

Yup, and not just in the "hey look, it's racing!" way, nope. At the 1998 Miller Lite 200 at Mid-Ohio, George Lucas and his crew recorded the sounds of the CART race to use as part of the sound mix for the podracing scenes in Episode I.

In fact - and unfortunately, I haven't seen the film so I can't confirm - I've seen the claim that the podracing sequence in Episode I mirrors the Monza race from the classic Formula One movie Grand Prix, which George Lucas is actually credited on as an assistant camera operator - which would lend some credence to the theory.

So yeah, I know I've kept this blog motorsports focused but I am a big Star Wars fan and have been for most of my life. To hear about James Earl Jones passing it's...it's just like...wow. It's unthinkable in a way. Obviously, he was getting older and all that, and there was that story a few years ago about him selling his voice rights to Disney, but like...to think that Darth Vader's voice actor is dead? That's crazy to me.

It's one of the biggest losses in recent media history, I think.

There will never be another voice quite that famous.

[herohimbowhore]

Red Bull and its everchanging driver lineup will forever be interesting to me. The Red Bull ecosystem/family/industrial complex, whatever it is that you want to call it, is something that knows no stability whatsoever.

Very rarely is there stability in the driver lineup for both Red Bull-affiliated teams.

Recency bias may have us thinking that this revolving door of Red Bull drivers has only occurred since 2016 or 2018. Because the Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber lineup was stable, as was the Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen lineup. Not to mention that Yuki Tsunoda and Pierre Gasly were teammates for two seasons! And let's not forget the days of David Coulthard and Mark Webber.

Despite those examples of stable lineups, there is always instability occurring at one of the teams, if not both.

Looking through the years, I compiled a list of every driver who's driven for Red Bull or Toro Rosso/AlphaTauri. So, every new driver, every single race change, mid-season swap. If there was a change, then it is listed.

In bold are the drivers currently driving for either Red Bull or AlphaTauri with the most recent first GP start. Lines 28 and 30 with Kyvat and Gasly mark the period in which Toro Rosso became AlphaTauri. The duration counts how many days are between the first GP and the last GP.

Some fun facts that I learned while making this:

Christian Klien and Vitantonio Liuzzi were supposed to trade off every four races in 2005. However, after Liuzzi's four races, Klien finished off the season.

Robert Doornbos is the only Red Bull/Toro Rosso driver to not have a full time drive within the Red Bull industrial complex.

Daniil Kyvat was replaced for the second time in less than two years during his 2016-2017 run. He was replaced by Pierre Gasly for Malaysia and Japan in 2017 due to underwhelming results, then returned for the US GP when Gasly was competing in a Super Formula race. In the end, despite Toro Rosso saying that Gasly was not a permanent replacement and Kyvat was still a part of the Red Bull family, he did not finish out the season and would not return until 2019, making it his third time leaving and coming back to Toro Rosso. (And funnily enough, his 2019 return was to replace Gasly.)

Drivers who have driven for the longest in the Red Bull industrial complex:

Max Verstappen: 3170 days and counting (also has the longest run with only one team - 2757 days and counting)

Sebastian Vettel: 2520 days

Mark Webber: 2443 days

Daniel Ricciardo: 2379 days

Daniil Kyvat: 1793 days

Drivers who have driven the least total days:

Robert Doornbos: 21 days

Liam Lawson: 42 days

Nyck De Vries: 126 days

Brendon Hartley: 399 days

Alex Albon: 469 days

The table, while helpful, doesn't fully allow us to visualize just how unstable the driver lineups are. So, I made a timeline:

(please ignore that driver names aren't in the same places between pictures. the website I was using only allowed 18 events at a time, so there was some shuffling around.)

The driver changes on the top portion in each picture is Red Bull and on the bottom portion, it is Toro Rosso/AlphaTauri.

Maybe this is normal? You know, F1` is a sport that changes all the time. Every year we've had sprint races, it has been different. So, maybe driver changes so often are just the norm?

While there is no direct comparison (as is the case for almost everything in Formula 1), two other current teams on the grid had their first races in the 21st century -- Mercedes and Haas.

Mercedes might have one of the most stable driver lineups. Since 2010, they have only had five drivers. With the exception of George Russell filling in for Lewis Hamilton in 2020 for one race, all drivers raced every race they were supposed to.

Haas, similar to Mercedes, finished driver contracts and didn't make mid-season changes. The only exception was Pietro Fittipaldi completing the 2020 season after Romain Grosjean's crash.

Again, it's not a direct comparison, but there is a very visible difference.

Mercedes has had a stable lineup because they had their world champion driver and a teammate who could be there to pick up the points. Red Bull technically has the same with Max and Sergio now and did have the same with Sebastian and Mark.

But there's a key difference between the Red Bull industrial complex and teams like Mercedes and Haas. Red Bull, for as long as it has been in Formula One, has had a neverending list of drivers waiting in the wings. The Red Bull juniors are like a hydra - you cut off one head and two grow back. One Red Bull junior leaves, there's at least a handful to replace him.

Haas can't develop junior drivers and Mercedes tends to focus their attention on just one or two juniors. They don't have a list of drivers that they can pick and choose to replace a driver. They also don't have a junior team from which they can shuffle things around.

I doubt that Red Bull will ever have the same long-standing driver lineups like other teams, but I am curious to see if the reduced junior drivers will allow for some stability in AlphaTauri (or Racing Bulls I guess).

[umseb]

"Only one Karting World Championship is organised, with the aim of increasing further the value of this title. It is exclusively reserved for Formula Super A, and 21 Teams with two Drivers each are entered. The competition consists in a series of five events, which are held in Canada, in Belgium, in France, in Italy and, after the cancellation of the Japanese round, in Germany. This last round, held on the Kerpen circuit, sees the participation of Michael Schumacher (DEU), who finishes second. The title is grasped by Vitantonio Liuzzi (ITA). Carlo Van Dam (NLD) quite clearly dominates the European Formula A Championship. Sebastian Vettel (DEU) carries off the European Juniors’ Championship and the Monaco Kart Cup." - 2001

[bea-snow]

Some of you are too young to remember but Christian Klien and Vitantonio Liuzzi had to share the Red Bull in 2005. Helmut Marko thought it was a good idea to push drivers to prove themselves constantly...

oh, you want to replace nyck de vries with daniel ricciardo after the summer break to see how daniel compares to yuki? why stop there? the indycar season ends in time to throw alex palou into that car for singapore. but if you really want to be thorough, super formula ends in october, so liam lawson should be free to drive the last three races! make it the sisterhood of the travelling alpha tauri car. whoever does best gets to keep it for next year (before inevitably getting fired mid season again)

[rbr-seb]

Top or Bottom? Red Bull edition

based on an enlightening discord chat

Drivers-

1. David Coulthard

So fab. So incredibly sexy. Definitely has bottomed.

Final Evaluation: Switch Dom

2. Christian Klein

This screams Twink. Tom Holland vibes. Delicious. He's definitely experimented. Fight me.

Final Evaluation: Bottom Sub

3. Vitantonio Liuzzi

He has that whole sexy european vibe going on but he is so confused. We Stan

Final Evaluation: Bottom Dom

4. Robert Doornbos

Yes I too would leave F1 and start a Sex Toy company for funsies and cash money, (because I did my market research and everyone on the paddock could definitely use one)

Final Evaluation: Bratty Switch

5. Mark Webber

I think he tries too hard to not be perceived gay. but he is. and that is facts.

Final Evaluation: Annoyed Switch Dom

6. Sebastian Vettel

Job well done. The evidence is very very explicit. (Also evidence for Mark)

Final Evaluation: Switch (everything is switchable)

7. Daniel Ricciardo

A work of art. Fuccboi Guy next door vibes. Especially during the Renault stint.

Final Evaluation: Power Switch

---

Part 2

[williamsmybeloved]

ok but Seb and Felipe said it the best😭😭also heikki because those finish roots do something

[talksaboutracing]

All that piercings talk, so here have Lewis and Tonio pre-piercings - World Karting Championships, Mariembourg, Belgium, 22-23 September 2001

[ilovejevsjeans]

Korea 2011 - Dan failed to set a quali time due to an electrical problem and started P24. Despite this he would finish P19 and two places ahead of Liuzzi.

10 years of Dan

10 years of Dan:2011

[changing-my-username]

Liuzzi penalizing Max for an incident at the same corner where he took out several cars on lap 1 in 2011.

[sebfreak]

Vitantonio Liuzzi (Force India) and Sebastian Vettel (Red Bull)

[mindthegraveltrap]