Antonio Giovinazzi was happy with the outcome of Qualifying for the Portuguese Grand Prix on Saturday, with the Italian set to start twelfth on the grid at the Autódromo Internacional do Algarve.
The Alfa Romeo Racing ORLEN driver was slightly downbeat to miss out on the top ten, but from twelfth he feels confident he can move forward as he will be able to choose a strategy that will give them a chance of a first top ten finish of 2021.
“I am happy with P12, especially because it shows how much we’re progressing: we were very close to a place in Q3, but at least we can choose our optimal strategy tomorrow,” said Giovinazzi. “The car felt much better today than yesterday, even though the conditions were still very tricky.
“We seem to have regained the pace we showed in Bahrain after some bad luck in qualifying in Imola, but now we have to make it matter on Sunday.
“We need the right strategy, a good start and a good race: our pace looked good yesterday, so we can have some fun. I am looking forward to it.”
“Unfortunately we couldn’t put a lap together in the final run” – Kimi Räikkönen
Team-mate Kimi Räikkönen was unhappy with his own performance in Q2, with the Finn making mistakes that prevented him from bettering fifteenth on the grid.
Räikkönen agreed with Giovinazzi that the C41-Ferrari was a much better car to drive on Saturday than it had been on Friday, but the mistakes cost him at least a few positions on the grid and potentially a top ten starting place.
“We could have got a better result today as we had made a step forward compared to yesterday, but unfortunately we couldn’t put a lap together in the final run,” said Räikkönen. “I missed one corner in both my laps on the last set of tyres in Q2 and P15 is what you can expect when this happens.
“We’ll try again tomorrow: we know it’s not going to be easy, but we will give our best and see where we end up at the end of the day.”
