Antonio Giovinazzi says Alfa Romeo has to investigate why it was “nowhere” in race pace as it again missed out on points at Formula 1’s Japanese Grand Prix.
Giovinazzi almost made it through to Q3 at Suzuka, qualifying 11th upon his first visit to the venue, but regressed in race trim, placing only 16th.
It came after Alfa Romeo also struggled for pure performance in Russia, where the Italian was the final of the 15 classified finishers.
“It was really difficult,” said Giovinazzi of his race. “I think the pace was really slow for the race.
“I think qualifying we were not too bad, really close to the midfield teams.
“But in the race, we were nowhere, so we need to check everything and try to find the right solution for the next race.”
Team-mate Kimi Raikkonen talked pre-weekend about validating Alfa Romeo’s pace after a sequence of struggles but he came only 14th.
It marked his fifth straight race without a top 10 result.
“We always do all we can to bring home a good result and in the end, the car was pretty good on the last set of tyres,” he said.
“We were running three, four seconds faster than earlier in the race, but unfortunately by then we had lost a lot of time and our afternoon was compromised.
“We couldn’t find a good balance in the first two stints on Medium and Hard tyres, they just wouldn’t work and I had no front end.
“We have to look at the data to understand what happened and figure out what to fix so that we can consistently have the performance we had in the final part of the race.”
Alfa Romeo remains a distant eighth in the Constructors’ Championship.
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