Antonio Giovinazzi was left fuming at the end of last Sunday's Mexico City Grand Prix, ruing a disastrous strategy call by his Alfa Romeo team that left him lingering down the order in the race.
The Italian who is fighting, likely in vain, to retain his seat with Alfa Romeo for 2022 enjoyed a fantastic start from P11 on the grid, taking advantage of the commotion at the first corner to gain several spots to clock in sixth at the end of the first lap.
Giovinazzi lost a spot to Ferrari's Carlso Sainz thereafter but was mixing it among the top ten when he was called in for an early pitstop on lap 16 after his rear tyres started losing grip.
However, the Alfa charger resumed his race just behind the dueling duo of Daniel Ricciardo and Valtteri Bottas who he was forced to follow until the pair made their second stops much later in the race.
Giovinazzi was then left at the end of the day on the doorstep of a top ten finish, just behind McLaren's Lando Norris, while teammate Kimi Raikkonen crossed the chequered flag P8.
The Italian was non too please with his team's strategy call and derided the Alfa pitwall on his cool-down lap. "Hey guys, thanks for the great strategy" he quipped over the radio.
"I'm just really disappointed because today we had the chance to score points with two cars," he said. "But on my side, the strategy was completely wrong.
"We pitted too early, but I don't think that was the issue. The issue was that when I came out, I was in traffic. And the strategy didn't work. So, yeah, just really disappointed.
"I think today, if Kimi [Raikkonen] stayed P8 and I was P7 at that moment, so disappointing because the team didn't score as much as possible. And this is really hard for myself as well. But it's like this.
"It was just a great first lap, but in the end, it didn't do anything for my end result. So good first lap, just disappointed with the situation."
Alfa Romeo team boss owned up to the Swiss outfit's botched strategy call.
"For sure it was a strong performance overall from the quali," he told Motorsport.com. "We had a good start, we avoided the crash, we were running P6 and P9, and then P7 and P9 when Sainz passed Antonio.
"The pace was OK, but we made a choice on the strategy. We were very surprised with the pace of Ricciardo and Bottas, and then we were stuck behind them, which was a bit a shame, because he did a great job.
"Honestly the strategy was not stupid at this stage, but it didn't work, because we didn't expect Ricciardo and Bottas would be so slow. At least with Kimi we scored some good points."
The end result in Mexico City yielded four points for Alfa Romeo, but the Hinwil squad is struggling to close the now 12-point gap to eighth placed team Williams in the Constructors' standings.
"Let's stay focused," said Vasseur. "We scored four points in Sochi, four points here, we have four more races to go. Let's see what could happen."
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