Not the best day in the office for Alfa Romeo Racing in the qualifying session for the 2019 Spanish Grand Prix, which will take place tomorrow at the Circuit de Catalunya. Kimi Raikkonen and Antonio Giovinazzi didn’t manage to spend their lap time in the best way, and they are now in a quite vulnerable position in the lower half of the grid, which means that the Alfa Romeo engineers will be in the garage until late tonight in order to find the best strategy to turn tomorrow’s race.
Frédéric Vasseur, Team Principal Alfa Romeo Racing and CEO Sauber Motorsport AG:
“This was not a good qualifying session at all: In the morning everything seemed to be fine, but then the temperature increased and all of a sudden we couldn’t get the tyres working. But it’s not just that, we have too many issues at once which slow us down and which we have to improve for tomorrow’s race.”
Kimi Räikkönen (car number 7):
Alfa Romeo Racing C38 (Chassis 02/Ferrari)
Qualifying: 14th / 1:17.788 (14 laps)
3rd practice: 9th / 1:17.969 (17 laps)
“We struggled a bit with the set up at the beginning of the weekend, but then FP3 was quite okay. Then the conditions changed and this made it difficult for us. On one hand I’m not happy, on the other hand we tried everything. We did the best lap of the weekend in qualifying but unfortunately it’s not fast enough. It’s not one big issue we have, it’s lots of little things which we need to work on and improve.”
Antonio Giovinazzi (car number 99):
Alfa Romeo Racing C38 (Chassis 03/Ferrari)
Qualifying: 18th / 1:18.664 (8 laps)
3rd practice: 16th / 1:18.740 (14 laps)
“I have been struggling with my brakes all weekend and it was no different in today’s qualifying. It’s quite disappointing to go out in Q1, I did a mistake in Turn 10, locked up the fronts and that probably cost me a place in Q2. Tomorrow’s race will be challenging because overtaking here is not easy. We will continue working on making improvements and see what we can do in the race.”
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