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Gap to Virgin surmountable - Liuzzi

Tonio Liuzzi: "There is no hiding from the fact that we have a lot of work ahead of us" © Sutton Images

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• Drivers:
• Tonio Liuzzi

• Teams:
• HRT
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• Virgin

HRT driver Tonio Liuzzi is confident his team can close the gap to nearest rivals Virgin at the upcoming races.

His 2011 car completed no pre-season testing and missed out on the first race in Australia after failing to qualify. However, it showed more promise at the second round in Malaysia, allowing Liuzzi and team-mate Narain Karthikeyan to boost its mileage ahead of the Chinese Grand Prix.

In qualifying Liuzzi was 0.5 seconds off Virgin's Jerome d'Ambrosio and he believes that gap will close as the car continues to improve.

"I think that is a true reflection of our form at the moment," he told ESPNF1 in his latest column. "I think maybe we could have gone a few tenths faster, but we are pretty happy about where we were in qualifying and we showed that we have a good chance to close the gap soon."

He said the car had some positive aspects and would benefit from upgrades at the next two races.

"On the plus side I think the balance of the car is not too bad, the engine is working really well and we have some other good points," he added. "There is potential, we just need to accumulate mileage and understand which way we need to go for the future. We have some little updates for the next race in China but most of the new parts are for Turkey, so for sure we can keep closing the gap to our competitors."

Liuzzi revealed that the biggest problem with the chassis was a lack of rear-end grip.

"There is no hiding from the fact that we have a lot of work ahead of us," he admitted. "We need to tune a lot of areas, we need to develop a lot of areas - the weakest part is the rear end where we have a lack of traction. It's a mix of getting the best from the tyres and improving the aerodynamics: we need a better understanding of the mechanical side of the car, but of course the lack of downforce is always an issue because you can never have too much."

Laurence Edmondson is an deputy editor on ESPNF1

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.