Antonio Giovinazzi: “We had good pace but we couldn’t put it together when it mattered”

Antonio Giovinazzi felt it was a long British Grand Prix last Sunday, with the Italian having a relatively low-key afternoon on his way to thirteenth place at the chequered flag.

The Alfa Romeo Racing ORLEN driver felt his C41-Ferrari had good pace at Silverstone, but he was unable to use it to good effect when it mattered, and ultimately, he was unable to keep Yuki Tsunoda behind him as he got stuck behind Williams Racing’s George Russell.

Giovinazzi rued the fact that Scuderia AlphaTauri Honda’s Tsunoda went on to score a point for tenth place, and he continues to wait for his second top ten finish of the season, something he hopes will come next time out in Hungary.

“It was a long race and not an overly exciting one for me, we had good pace but we couldn’t put it together when it mattered,” said Giovinazzi.  “We were in front of Tsunoda before the stops, but got stuck behind Russell and couldn’t get through.

“This wasn’t a track where overtaking is easy, and it’s quite a disappointment when you see that Yuki eventually finished in the points.

“We’ll need to learn from this and focus on Hungary. It’s a track with slow corners and no long straights, so it should fit us a bit better.”

“It wasn’t too bad a race until the contact with Pérez” – Kimi Räikkönen

Team-mate Kimi Räikkönen ended fifteenth after a late race spin at the penultimate turn saw him drop away from the battle for points.

The Finn was running side-by-side in an exciting battle with Red Bull Racing’s Sergio Pérez when he clipped the kerb and rotated the car, and although he was able to keep going, he lost ground and was unable to break into the points.

Räikkönen felt there was not a lot more that he could have done on Sunday, with the Finn hoping the team are able to find something that will make them more competitive going forward, starting with the Hungarian Grand Prix.

“It wasn’t too bad a race until the contact with Pérez,” said Räikkönen.  “We knew it would be a difficult afternoon but we had a good start and were able to run in the top ten for a while.

“I had a nice battle with Sergio, we went side by side in quite a few corners but suddenly the space was gone: I am not sure what happened but I spun and that was it. In the end, we had to do a lot of defending, we were still missing something to be in the points until the flag.

“Hopefully the next tracks will play a bit more to our strengths and we can be more competitive.”

Kimi Räikkönen was in with a chance of points at Silverstone but a late spin put paid to that chance – Credit: Xavi Bonilla / DPPI