The Italian’s afternoon was badly compromised as he had to rely on the manual signals from his pit board, which inevitably lacked the details necessary to properly manage his race.
It also helped make him one of the last drivers to pit in the rain on the final laps, with only Lando Norris and Charles Leclerc coming after him.
After losing starting positions with a transmission penalty, Giovinazzi’s race went wrong after contact with Mick Schumacher’s Haas left him in 19th place at the end of the first lap. He was eventually ranked 16th.
“I had contact with I don’t know who at Turn 2 and I lost a bit of position there,” he said.
“I didn’t have a radio from the first lap so it was impossible to communicate with the team and it was just a tough race with fuel economy.
“I tried looking directly at my box on the main street to see what to do, but without the radio it was just a mess.
“And then with the rain at the end, I had no communication. It was just a quiet race for me, so just a difficult race from the first lap.
“It was also difficult to overtake, so I lost a lot of time there. When I was in the open air, the pace was good. But we lost a lot of laps.”
Also read:
After strong qualifying in the last two races at Zandvoort and Monza, Giovinazzi needed a good race in Russia to keep his dwindling hopes for the Alfa seat alive. A fall in training and his restless Sunday afternoon did him little favors.
“This weekend was a little more difficult,” said Alfa team principal Fred Vasseur to Motorsport.com.
“We had a problem with the brakes yesterday. I don’t want to say that the race was bad at all because we had too many problems. The first was the contact at Turn 1.
“Mick hit Antonio in the stern, he went straight, damaged the floor and then got stuck behind the group.
“And then we lost the radio link from the start, so we had to show the signal the old-fashioned way.
“Once you have to give orders about management and so on, it’s difficult. You can’t give as many details as when talking, and you can’t say that you have to save tires or fuel at this level.
“He couldn’t talk at all. And in the beginning we could talk to him, and then he lost communication completely.”
Speaking of Giovinazzi’s hopes of holding onto the seat, Vasseur said, “You don’t have to attend a meeting.
“In the last few weekends the pace in qualifying at Zandvoort and Monza was really good and this weekend I think the pace was okay on Friday.”
Antonio Giovinazzi, Alfa Romeo Racing C41 crashes during practice
Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images
The post Antonio Giovinazzi’s F1 race in Sochi “a mess” after a radio failure first appeared on monter-une-startup.
