Antonio Giovinazzi confirmed at Sauber for 2019!

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Another piece of the 2019 driver jigsaw has slotted into place with the official announcement that Antonio Giovinazzi will be driving for Sauber alongside Kimi Raikkonen.

The Ferrari junior has been working with the team for the last two seasons.

The 24-year-old Italian made his Grand Prix debut with Sauber in 2017 as a last-minute replacement for an injured Pascal Wehrlein in the Australian and Chinese races.

Since then, Giovinazzi has also been undertaking test and development duties for Ferrari at Maranello.

Now he will get a chance to show what he can do over the course of a full season of competition, as he steps into Sauber in his own right in place of Marcus Ericsson.

“I am delighted to be joining the Alfa Romeo Sauber F1 Team," Giovinazzi said on Tuesday. "This is a dream come true.

"It is a great pleasure to have the chance to race for this team. As an Italian, it is a huge honour for me to represent a brand as iconic and successful as Alfa Romeo in our sport.

Raikkonen signing 'already paying off for Sauber'

"I would like to thank the Scuderia Ferrari and the Alfa Romeo Sauber F1 Team for giving me this great opportunity," he added. "I am very motivated and cannot wait to start working towards achieving great results together."

With Raikkonen already having swapped places with the Ferrari-bound Charles Leclerc, it's understood that the choice of who took the second seat at the Swiss squad was down to the team's title sponsor Alfa Romeo.

Frédéric Vasseur, CEO and team principal of Sauber, said he was delighted by the decision and what it meant for the team next year.

"We are very pleased to reveal the complete driver line-up for the 2019 season," he said. "Together with Alfa Romeo, we are delighted to welcome Antonio Giovinazzi.

"We have already had the opportunity to work with him in the past and he has proven to have great potential.

"We first signed Kimi Räikkönen, an extremely experienced driver who will contribute to the development of our car and will accelerate the progress of our team as a whole."

"We are very determined and motivated. Our target is to continue progressing and fighting together for positions that count.”

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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.