Feature

Team Talk - Sunday in Baku

Alfa Romeo

Antonio Giovinazzi
“I had a great start and this allowed me to be back in the battle for the points from the start. It wasn’t an easy race as I had a small issue with the brakes, which is not ideal on a track like this, but my pace was quite good anyway. We made an early stop to undercut some of our rivals and after that, it was a bit quiet until the red flag. At the restart, I gained some positions on turn one but I made contact with Ricciardo at the second corner and my car went into anti-stall. I think we got all we could out of this race, especially starting from last, and we ended up so close to the points. Many things happened today, it was quite a crazy race in the end, but we need to be happy as we got to score another point with Kimi, the second race in a row for our team.”

Kimi Raikkonen
“Not a lot happened in my race until the last two laps, so it’s good to bring home a point. Overtaking proved surprisingly difficult, we were able to catch up with the cars ahead of us relatively easily but we couldn’t make the move. The restart after the red flag was quite hectic, we could have been better but it could have also gone badly wrong so we’ll take the point. I don’t think we could have done more, in the end.”

Frédéric Vasseur, team principal
“We can be happy with bringing a point home, especially as we displayed good pace with both cars from start to finish. We were starting in far from ideal positions, but everyone in the team did a good job to allow us to fight for points until the final laps: to finish in the top ten for the second race running is a reward for clean driving, a strategy that allowed both drivers to be in a fighting position and some good stops. At the restart, we had to play our cards smartly as everyone was going to take some risks, but in the end we managed to come away with a good point. We have once again shown the progress we have made and how we’re in the position to be fighting for top tens regularly, but there’s still work to be done. We are confident and the last few races have really encouraged us, so we can keep pushing towards our objective.”

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.