Alfa Romeo Racing’s Frederic Vasseur has come out in support of Antonio Giovinazzi stating that the issues surrounding him is due to the team and not him.
Even though it isn’t Giovinazzi’s F1 debut this year, it still is his first full year in the sport and he is up against a world champion Kimi Raikkonen. The start certainly hasn’t been the best for the Italian with him yet to score points for Alfa Romeo.
At the same time, Raikkonen has managed to score all the 12 points with Alfa Romeo tied with Renault in the constructors’ championship. Many have raised fingers already on Giovinazzi’s performances, especially when compared to the other F1 debutants.
The team though has come in support of the Italian as Vasseur states that his troubles are down to the team’s handling rather than the driver. Both in Bahrain and China, Giovinazzi missed a chunk of time during the practice sessions which put him on a backfoot.
“I normally don’t spend much time in overanalyzing previous races – I look forward and work hard on how we can come back even stronger – but after three races it makes sense to reflect on our performance so far,” started Vasseur.
“We’ve scored points, which is great, the car showed great potential, but at the same time we faced some technical issues and tricky situations. Kimi is doing a great job, his feedback to engineers is as precise as it can be and as soon as he sits in the car he gets the job done.
“Antonio so far couldn’t show his real potential, but that’s completely down to the team. Some technical issues and therefore missed track time meant that he could never get comfortable and get the best out of the car, but especially in Australia in Q1 he showed how fast he is.
“Everyone just needs to be a bit patient and I’m sure he’ll come around. Baku means crashes and safety cars and overtaking so you’ll never know what to expect from the race, but our target is clear: we’ve put a lot of work into the development of our performance since the race in China so we want to finish in the points with both cars.”
Since China, Giovinazzi has spoken about racing against Raikkonen and the troubles he has had so far. The Italian certainly wants to contribute and he has never said that he will topple the Finn straightaway but adds that he can score points if he has a clean weekend.
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