Lights out at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix is in sight, after a hectic day of Qualifying at the historic Imola circuit.
It was a particularly challenging day for Alfa Romeo who found themselves out of Q1 this afternoon, with Kimi Raikkonen in P16 and Antonio Giovinazzi in P17.
The team admits their work will be cut out for them with the tough nature of the Imola track leaving little opportunity for overtaking, however, last year, the team managed to place both cars in the points after starting further back on the grid, and say “the objective is to battle our way through the field one more time.”
Speaking about today’s results, Frédéric Vasseur, Team Principal Alfa Romeo Racing ORLEN said:
“Today’s result is not what we aimed for, especially after the good performance we delivered yesterday. We were just not able to demonstrate the full potential of our car.
“Starting where we are won’t make our job easier, but we know we can compete against many of the cars ahead of us and we will do our best to make up on the ground we lost today.”
It wasn't to be today, and we didn't quite make it through. Tomorrow we go for it.
RAI ➡️ P16
GIO ➡️ P17#ImolaGP pic.twitter.com/2n3qEo10CZ— Alfa Romeo Racing ORLEN (@alfaromeoracing) April 17, 2021
Antonio Giovinazzi put today’s result down to a lack of respect on track shown by Nikita Mazepin in the Haas:
“It’s very disappointing not to get the chance to even set my final lap because of what happened today.
“Drivers normally respect each other on track but that was not the case today – Mazepin just failed to leave the space to the car ahead that all other drivers always give and destroyed my lap.
“I haven’t spoken with him yet, but this is not the behaviour we expect from each other on track.
“It’s a shame as the pace we had in the car yesterday was really good and we could have got a good result here: we will see what we can do tomorrow, but starting from P17 is not ideal as it’s quite hard to overtake here.
“We still go out, be positive and try to get the best possible result – we scored points from the back of the grid in 2020 so we won’t give up yet.”
Meanwhile, Kimi Raikkonen said they knew early on that today was going to be tough:
“We missed out on a place in Q2 by just a tenth, but when the margins are so close that’s enough to be out earlier than expected”, he said.
“We knew from the morning we were going to struggle, there was nothing wrong specifically but we just lost a bit of the pace we had yesterday.
“Tomorrow we will have a big job to get back in the points: a lot will depend on the weather, whether it rains or not.
Judging by yesterday, we seem to be stronger in race trim but overtaking is not easy around here: we will do our best and see what we can get out of this race.”
