The Italian driver, recently confirmed by the Swiss team for next season, was able to make up six places on the first lap of Emilia Romagna GP, avoiding some incidents in front of him. Giovinazzi finished the race on P10, making it his third points finish during the 2020 season. Due to the far grid positions after the qualifying at Imola, and Raikkonen being P18 and Giovinazzi P20, Alfa Romeo decided to use a different strategy and put the Italian on soft tyres for the start, while 9 cars in front of him were starting on mediums. 

In the past couple of races, Giovinazzi showed he’s able to put very good first laps, with gaining a couple of positions each time. During this race, he was able to immediately passed Latifi, then Grosjean and Stroll who both ran wide, Kevin Magnussen who spun, his teammate Raikkonen and then Sebastian Vettel. 

When asked after the race, the Italian revealed what helped him pull off such a good start at the track where F1 raced for the last time in 2006. As he said: “An amazing first lap, I gained six positions again. Yesterday night I did again quite a lot of work watching all the starts, from Formula Renault, Formula 4, all the stuff I had here in the laptop. And I put it all together on lap one, a little bit of luck and everything, and this is it. We pushed quite a lot in the beginning of the race with the soft, and then we changed to medium, pushing until the end.”

Giovinazzi, who did not pit under the safety car managed to stay on P10 just behind his teammate Raikkonen, who pulled off a very long first stint on the mediums. 

As he said: “It was a little bit tricky in the end, with the mediums they were quite old, and the temperature dropped. It was difficult to keep the people behind who were on softs. I did the maximum the keep all the cars behind, and I was in the points, so I was really pushing very hard. It’s a good thing to celebrate the renewal of the contract. I think it was all good. I think also with Kimi scoring points with two cars is something great for the team and Alfa Romeo.”

Xevi Pujolar, the trackside engineering chef of Alfa agreed that the strategy for Giovinazzi worked very well. He admitted: "We were a bit on the aggressive side, not with Kimi, but with Antonio. But then we were trying to cover both ends, with Antonio we were covering the early pitstops, and then with Kimi the late ones, in case of different safety career scenarios. We were surprised when Antonio boxed quite early with the soft then people starting with the medium were covering us, trying to protect as well, and going with the hard.”

Raikkonen and Giovinazzi are currently 16th and 17th respectively in the drivers standings, in front of the two Haas and two Williams drivers. During the Emilia Romagna GP both of the Alfa drivers finished in front one of the Ferrari’s (Sebastian Vettel), something that Giovinazzi was also able to do during the Russian and Eifel GP as well.