It was a difficult day for Alfa Romeo Racing on Saturday at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, with both Kimi Räikkönen and Antonio Giovinazzi struggling for performance during Qualifying for the Spanish Grand Prix with their C38-Ferrari’s.
Räikkönen, who has scored points in all of the first four Grand Prix of 2019, was eliminated in the second segment of Qualifying on Saturday and will start fourteenth, with the Finn admitting that there are a lot of little things that are affecting the performance of his car around the Spanish track.
“We struggled a bit with the set up at the beginning of the weekend, but then FP3 was quite okay,” said Räikkönen. “Then the conditions changed and this made it difficult for us.
“On one hand I’m not happy, on the other hand we tried everything. We did the best lap of the weekend in qualifying but unfortunately it’s not fast enough. It’s not one big issue we have, it’s lots of little things which we need to work on and improve.”
Team-mate Giovinazzi was eliminated at the first hurdle and revealed that he has been struggling throughout the weekend with his brakes, although a mistake at turn ten on his quickest lap perhaps denied him the chance of joining Räikkönen in Q2.
“I have been struggling with my brakes all weekend and it was no different in today’s qualifying,” said Giovinazzi. “It’s quite disappointing to go out in Q1, I did a mistake in Turn 10, locked up the fronts and that probably cost me a place in Q2.
“Tomorrow’s race will be challenging because overtaking here is not easy. We will continue working on making improvements and see what we can do in the race.”
Team Principal Frédéric Vasseur admitted that it was not a good Qualifying performance for Alfa Romeo, with the increase in temperature ahead of the session meaning they struggled to get the best out of their Pirelli tyres.
”This was not a good qualifying session at all: In the morning everything seemed to be fine, but then the temperature increased and all of a sudden we couldn’t get the tyres working,” said Vasseur.
“But it’s not just that, we have too many issues at once which slow us down and which we have to improve for tomorrow’s race.”
