“Our race was compromised on the first lap” – Antonio Giovinazzi

It was a difficult Austrian Grand Prix for Antonio Giovinazzi to bring an end to his triple-header, Alfa Romeo Racing ORLEN team-mate Kimi Räikkönen finished sixteenth.

It was a struggle straight from the lights going out for Giovinazzi, the Italian was forced into an early pit-stop after colliding with Esteban Ocon on the opening lap. Giovinazzi was then awarded a five-second time penalty for overtaking Fernando Alonso under the safety car, the Alpine F1 Team were certainly not Giovinazzi’s good luck charm!

With the penalty being taken during his second pit-stop, Giovinazzi’s race was effectively over with the Alfa Romeo driver getting stuck behind Nicholas Latifi, in the end fourteenth was the best the Italian could salvage. Giovinazzi is hoping for better luck at the British Grand Prix.

“A frustrating day: just as last week, our race was compromised on the first lap. I had contact with Esteban and had to pit: we had good pace afterwards but everyone was pretty close and it was very difficult to recover much. I got stuck behind a Williams, then even got a penalty – a weekend to forget. Hopefully we can have a better race in Silverstone as the performance was not bad.”

“We just lacked that little bit to be in the top ten” Kimi Räikkönen

Up until the final lap is was a largely positive race for Kimi Räikkönen, the Finnish driver had an excellent start and raced hard in the early stages.

Räikkönen found himself at the end of the race battling with George Russell, Fernando Alonso and Sebastian Vettel for the final point spot. Unfortunately on the final lap it all came to a crashing end for Räikkönen who unsightly hit the rear-left of Vettel’s car, the German slid up the inside of Räikkönen at turn five only to be hit into the gravel by the Alfa Romeo driver.

Räikkönen did manage to finish the race and crossed the line in sixteenth place, he did get two penalty points slapped onto his licence for causing the crash. In the end it was all for nothing for the veteran driver.

“It was a race in which the car was pretty ok but we just lacked that little bit to be in the top ten. We had a first long stint on hards, then on mediums we were able to catch up to the guys in front fighting for tenth. Alonso went past Russell, I went close, then had the contact with Seb. We came together and that was it, in the end it didn’t change the end result as we would have both fallen a bit short of the points.”