© Sutton Images

In his youth he was widely regarded as one of the top karters of his generation. He won the karting world championship in 2001, beating Michael Schumacher at the German's home track in Kerpen on his way to victory, before quickly rising through the lower formula.

It was F3000 where he found his niche, taking best rookie honours in an impressive season in 2003. Pole position at Hungaroring was the highlight, Liuzzi out qualifying his nearest competitor by half a second having only completed nine laps at the circuit. In 2004 he took the championship, winning seven of the ten races - a record only matched by Juan Pablo Montoya and Nick Heidfeld.

Formula One was the next logical step and in 2005 he shared a Red Bull race seat with Christian Klien. Liuzzi got just four races compared to Klien's 13 and picked up one point in his brief stint at the start of the season. While Klien stayed on at Red Bull the next year, Liuzzi was given a full race seat at the junior team Toro Rosso alongside Scott Speed. It was using a year-old chassis and a restricted V10 engine (compared with unrestricted V8s in the other cars), but he out-performed Speed and scored the outfit's only point of the season.

For 2007 Toro Rosso used the same chassis as Red Bull and an up-to-date V8 engine. Sebastian Vettel joined the team halfway through the season and soon got the best out of the car, giving Liuzzi a run for his money as they both scored good results.

2008 saw him take a testing role at Force India and he didn't race again in F1 until 2009 when he replaced Giancarlo Fisichella, who had been recruited by Ferrari to sub for the injured Felipe Massa. His best performance was at his home race at Monza, but it was cruelly cut short by transmission failure after he looked locked on for a points finish.

In late November 2009 Force India confirmed that he would retain his race seat for the 2010 season.

Strengths and Weaknesses
He's a quick driver over one lap but has yet to live up to the prodigous talent he showed in karting.

Career High
Scoring a point in his debut race in front of home fans at Imola.

Career Low
Crashing in his second and third races with Red Bull.

Quotes
"I would like to drive a car from the 50s or 60s with my shoulders out of the cockpit. I think that was the time when they were real racers - they had balls and not so many cares about traction control or electronics."

"I think some people expected me to become an asshole when I got into Formula One but I think that I kept myself true and I'm really proud that everybody realised this."

November 2009