Antonio Giovinazzi ignoring Alfa Romeo team orders "not ideal" after costing point

Giovinazzi, Alfa Romeo, Russia — Photo: © LAT Images

Turkish Grand Prix

Giovinazzi ignoring Alfa Romeo team orders "not ideal" after costing point

Giovinazzi was asked to move aside for Raikkonen but ignored the call

Ewan Gale

Wednesday 13 October 2021 14:45

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Alfa Romeo head of trackside engineering Xevi Pujolar has conceded Antonio Giovinazzi ignoring team orders at the Turkish Grand Prix was "not ideal".

Giovinazzi was asked to move aside for a fast-charging Kimi Raikkonen in the closing stages of the race with a points-finish available to the team.

The Italian, whose future is as yet unconfirmed at the team, did not cede position despite his team-mate's better pace and eventually finished just seven-tenths shy of Esteban Ocon in 10th.

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Explaining the situation after the race, Pujolar said: "We asked to swap positions but then, at this point, Antonio started to pick up the pace and he decided himself that he wanted to stay ahead.

"Maybe that situation is a couple of laps where we could potentially have been faster as a team. Then we needed one lap to catch Ocon.

"For sure, for the team, it was not ideal. I did not understand why we could not swap at this point because we can change it back depending on the situation.

"For us, it is important to achieve the points. Kimi's pace was strong at the time."

Alfa Romeo not focused on switch early in race

The race in Turkey was a strategy team's nightmare with rain forecast for during the event but never falling hard enough to affect conditions, whilst the track promised to dry but remained greasy throughout.

Pujolar added the team was not concerned about the pace advantage of one driver over the other early on because of the shroud around tyre strategy.

"At the beginning of the race, we didn't really focus so much on who is stronger," he commented.

"Both cars were there and we were managing... we didn't know how long the conditions would remain so we didn't want to put too much stress on positions and letting Kimi push hard and run out of tyres too quickly, so at that stage, we wanted to have a bit of space because nobody knew if it would be 20 laps, 30 laps or the whole race in inter conditions.

"At the end of the race, it was a different story. At that point, yes, we wanted to swap positions."