Antonio Giovinazzi feels more at home with a full-time F1 drive with Alfa Romeo Racing in 2019, more than what he had in 2017.
With an injury to the then Sauber driver Pascal Wehrlein in the Race of Champions event, the Swiss outfit were forced to field GP2 graduate Giovinazzi in the car in the 2017 Australian GP without even getting a Friday practice run.
The Italian still finished 12th while his second event in China ended up in a retirement. Since then, he tested for Haas and even Sauber in 2017 and 2018 respectively as a Ferrari junior but couldn’t secure a seat in F1 until 2019.
He was beaten by Charles Leclerc last year but ironically his promotion to Ferrari has made space for Giovinazzi in the re-named Alfa Romeo for 2019 alongside Kimi Raikkonen. Certainly, the 25-year-old feels better prepared and more relaxed now than 2017.
“I am just more relaxed [now] because that time in Melboune, I went with just two days of winter test and then I missed FP1 and FP2 and went straight into FP3, so for sure it was more difficult,” he said to media including FormulaRapida.net.
“But now, I have more time in the car with the team, so it is a different situation.” When pressed further by FormulaRapida.net, he added: “At that moment, I wasn’t the official driver and I was coming from GP2, so it was my first time also in F1 car.
“So it was a different situation. Now I already have some experience in F1 and I am the official driver, so all the work is completely different from that moment but overall yeah, it was a different situation.
“I just feel like an official driver now, so it is more working for my car, working for my team and this is what we need to do for the season. It is hard to compare the cars if you ask as the 2017 Sauber car is of course different from this.
“But [speaking generally] I enjoy a lot, driving a F1 car. I also enjoy to be in a race weekend which I missed mostly [due to my non-racing programme in 2017 and 2018]. And so, I cannot wait to be in Melbourne.”
After the quick promotion of Leclerc, the work for Giovinazzi becomes a bit harder as comparisons will be made. At the same time, he will be up against a F1 world champion which is not only a daunting task, but gives him equal opportunity as well.
When asked about his goals and if beating Raikkonen will be one of them, Giovinazzi didn’t count that as a target for now – at least to the media. “I think it [beating Raikkonen] is not a target. It is about being relaxed and doing my job and then we see what we can do.
“We are [two] different drivers, but [obviously] he is more experienced and is a world champion, so driving beside him is [anyways] really good. I’ll try to learn a lot of things from him.”
Additional reporting by Arnau Vinals
Check out how the teams stacked up laps in two Barcelona tests