F1| Alfa Romeo wants Giovinazzi to become a team leader
The Italian's great improvement on his second season in F1 showed to Alfa Romeo that he has what it takes to lead the team.
How do you show up that you have what it takes to become a successful F1 driver and a team leader? Antonio Giovinazzi seems to have found the answer.
At his second season in the Circus as an official driver for Alfa Romeo, the Italian was very improved on the weakest point of his driving: starts. The 27-year-old seemed reborn; he could qualify better than his better-quoted teammate Kimi Raikkonen on nine out of seventeen races. Moreover, he improved massively on the starts, on which he struggled during his first season, arriving to race on first position in some laps.
Such an improvement shows potential and determination, and Alfa Romeo decided to confirm the Italian for its 2021 line-up too. The team, however, wants more from him. It expects the Ferrari “protegè” to keep improving so he could take the lead of the team.
Giovinazzi said he is already working to be stronger in 2021 ans he could improve by watching videos and studying the difference of his driving style and others, comparing them and learning by the best.
1/2 Quando da bambino mi chiedevano cosa volessi fare da grande la mia risposta era: il pilota di @F1 .
— Antonio Giovinazzi (@Anto_Giovinazzi) September 25, 2018
Oggi quello che sognavo da bambino si realizza e dal prossimo anno avró l’onore di essere pilota del team @alfa_romeo @SauberF1Team . pic.twitter.com/zVF201K7qn
“After qualifying of course we do the debriefing [where] you watch maybe the lap you did [and see] maybe where you lost something. But after that moment I'm just focused 100% for the race and for the start especially, - the Italian stated - Because with the cars that we have this year and then with the difficulty to follow and overtake, I think if you have a good start and good first lap and you gain positions there, then the race will be much more easy. I focus a lot on watching [videos] from the past year - the starts and onboards and also some videos that we have from last years. And this works quite well I would say. I'm really happy with the work that I did in this season and will continue to work like this for the future."
Focusing on the last season, he affirmed that it was difficult to race because the drivers had to face completely new tracks for which they weren’t prepared. Once again, his solution has been studying the tracks through videos. “When we have new tracks, of course I'm trying to watch maybe from the other categories - Formula 4 - every video that I can find the start [at] that track-, he added.
“I try to learn something from the videos, but yeah, it was not easy. I would say it's much more easy to have [a known quantity] like a Bahrain that you raced before and there's so many starts that you can watch online and what can happen in each corner. This is much more easy, but it was also quite nice to see in Imola watching the Formula 4 starts and then I had again a good first lap over there, so it was good."
Starting in Bahrain, the Italian will have plenty of time for studying and rewatching the videos so he will have to come back more reliable to take Alfa Romeo and bring it to a better season that the last one.
