Antonio Giovinazzi will get his first free practice session outing of the season this weekend at the Hockenheimring, with the Italian replacing Marcus Ericsson at the Alfa Romeo Sauber F1 Team on Friday morning.
The Italian, a junior driver of Scuderia Ferrari and the current reserve for Sauber, will participate in his first free practice session since the 2017 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, when he ran with the Haas F1 Team, and he becomes the second confirmed reserve driver to run in Germany, with Nicholas Latifi set to take over Esteban Ocon’s drive for the Sahara Force India F1 Team for FP1.
Giovinazzi has tested with Sauber, and with Ferrari, in the post-Spanish Grand Prix test in May, but has not raced Formula 1 machinery since replacing Pascal Wehrlein at Sauber for the opening two Grand Prix of 2017 in Australia and China, the year after finishing second in the final year of the GP2 Series behind current Red Bull Toro Rosso Honda driver Pierre Gasly.
The Italian has raced in 2018, competing in the 24 Hours of Le Mans with the AF Corse, and he finished fifth in the GTE Pro class alongside Toni Vilander and Luis Felipe Derani in a Ferrari 488 GTE Evo.
Ericsson will return to the C37-Ferrari for the remainder of the weekend, with the team eyeing a return to the points after a disappointing British Grand Prix in which both the Swede and team-mate Charles Leclerc retired. In the opening ten races, they have scored sixteen points between them and sit ninth in the Constructors’ Championship, ahead of the struggling Williams Martini Racing team.
