Alfa Romeo Racing’s Antonio Giovinazzi is looking to improve his race pace with the one year experience he gained ahead of 2020 F1 season.
Having made his F1 debut with Sauber for two rounds in place of Pascal Wehrlein in 2017, Giovinazzi had to wait a year for a full-time chance in 2019 with the re-branded Alfa Romeo outfit alongside Kimi Raikkonen, after the promotion of Charles Leclerc to Ferrari.
The Italian had a decent full year in F1 in 2019, where he did miss in some rounds while he was plain unlucky in some. Eventually, Giovinazzi finished 17th in the F1 drivers’ standings with 14 points while teammate Raikkonen was 12th with 43 to his name.
The Italian is looking to now improve on his race pace to have a better second F1 season which could be crucial for his future. “In 2020, I will be much ready, in terms of experience and everything,” he said to media including FormulaRapida.net.
“I want to do a lot of step on race pace, try to understand better these things, so I will work really hard on this side and also continue to push for quali. I think the end of the season was quite good, [but I] want to still do more, so we’ll see.
“Of course, me and Kimi will work really hard this winter, and try to have a good baseline for the start of the season. After that, if you have a good baseline, it’s much easier to work on the development. We need to have a good baseline for the first session in Barcelona.”
Looking more at 2019, Giovinazzi pointed out at the races he excelled while he also highlighted some of the bad ones. “My highlights, I think Monza and Singapore but also Brazil was I think the best result for us,” he said. “These three, for sure.
“They’re really good memories but bad ones, I think Spa is one of them [where I could have had a good points result]. Anyways, you need such bad memories also to learn from that and I’m sure I will be stronger in F1 2020.
“I’ll be taking many things for next season. For sure starting Melbourne, I will be much, much ready. As I said, it will be important for me and Kimi this winter to try to have a good car for 2020 because it will be really important, so we will do our best.”
Alfa Romeo will have Robert Kubica to help Giovinazzi and Raikkonen in the development process as well. The Polish driver signed with the team along with PKN ORLEN. It is unclear if he will have FP1 sessions too but it is likely that he will.
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The transcription was done by Duncan Leahy
