Portuguese Grand Prix – A tangle between team-mates and zero points for Alfa Romeo
At the start of the second lap of the race, the two Alfa Romeo cars made contact in the middle of the straight. Kimi Räikkönen lost his front wing and his race, while Antonio Giovinazzi escaped a puncture to finish 12th.
A scary moment for the Italo-Swiss team in Portimao! Kimi Räikkönen was slipstreaming his teammate Antonio Giovinazzi on the second lap of the Portuguese Grand Prix. But the Finn collided with the back of the Italian’s car. Frédéric Vasseur held his head in his hands and Iceman was forced to retire.
Giovinazzi gave a rather mixed assessment of his race with a finish outside the points.
« It was a very clean race, to be honest, despite what happened with Kimi. I only feared having a puncture afterwards. Otherwise, I had a great battle with Alonso at the beginning of the race and then with Sebastian [Vettel].
But our car is not yet ready to compete in the top 10, we are quite far behind. It’s the best we could do today. But if we look at Saturday, we were 12th, and 12th on Sunday. For now, we are there and we need to find some last things to score points.
Antonio Giovinazzi:
« we are quite far away. »
Räikkönen makes his mea culpa about the clash with Giovinazzi.
The Finnish driver confessed on the official F1 website, “It’s my fault. I had to change some settings (on the steering wheel, editor’s note) and I made a mistake on the first attempt. I saw that everything was fine and I ended up hitting him. Luckily, I didn’t destroy his tire. But it’s far from ideal.”
The team from the brand with the Clover must now get back on track in a week, in Barcelona, to score its first points of a difficultly started season.
