Antonio Giovinazzi hopes the upgrades made to Ferrari’s power unit for the 2021 Formula 1 season enables the Alfa Romeo Racing ORLEN team to be closer to the midfield battle.
The Italian will embark on his third full season with Alfa Romeo this year but will be hoping for a more competitive campaign this time around after scoring only four points across the seventeen races of the 2020 season. His team-mate Kimi Räikkönen also scored four points as Alfa Romeo ended up eighth in the Constructors’ Championship.
Giovinazzi says the hype coming from Ferrari about the upgrades they have made with the power unit gives everyone at Alfa Romeo hope that they can have a stronger campaign, but it will only be in pre-season testing at the Bahrain International Circuit next month when they will be able to get an idea of what kind of year it will likely be.
“I hope we can be closer to AlphaTauri and to the midfield,” said Giovinazzi to RTL. “The power unit will be important, but we have only data so far – the final data will be on the track.
“They [Ferrari] are positive. We don’t know the amount we will gain, especially because we don’t know how much the others will improve. This we will only know in Bahrain.
“The good thing is that at Ferrari there is a positive atmosphere, especially for the power unit, but we also need to know what Mercedes and Renault did with their engines. We will see in Bahrain when the first lap times come out and we can have a look.”
With the 2020 Bahrain Grand Prix having only taken place towards the end of last season, Giovinazzi says there is relatively ‘fresh’ data to fall back on for the season-opener of 2021. However, the aim for Alfa Romeo this season is to spend more time inside the top ten and score more points than they did last year.
“I think we have fresh data from Bahrain at the end of November, so we can compare the power unit and the car compared to last year, which is a good point for us,” said Giovinazzi. “But we need to just wait and see where we are.
“The target is quite simple – to be better compared to last year, to have the possibility to spend more time in the top ten and score more points by the end of the year. That’s the main target.
“The regulations are quite similar from last year, but you can see the front of our new car is different from the previous one, so this is one point where we focus more, plus the power unit will be different so we’ll see. To know how good it is we just need to wait [to be] at the track.”
