The Italian’s afternoon was badly compromised as he had to rely on the manual signals from his pit board, which inevitably lacked the kind of detail needed to properly manage his race.
It also contributed to the fact that he was one of the last drivers on the final laps to pit in the rain and only Lando Norris and Charles Leclerc left after him.
After losing starting places due to a transmission penalty – which caused him to drop to 17th place – 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 with at Turn 2 and I lost a bit of position there,” he said.
“From the first lap I didn’t have a radio, so it was impossible to communicate with the team and it was just a tough race with fuel economy.
“I was trying to watch my box on 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, because I lost a lot of time. When I was out in the open air, the pace was good. But we lost a lot of laps. “
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.
Antonio Giovinazzi, Alfa Romeo Racing C41, and Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing RB16B, run far at the start as Charles Leclerc, Ferrari SF21, Yuki Tsunoda, AlphaTauri AT02 and Valtteri Bottas, Mercedes W12
Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images
“This weekend was a bit more difficult,” said Alfa team principal Fred Vasseur to Autosport.
“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 on Turn 1.
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“Mick hit Antonio in the back, he drove straight ahead, 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 through management and so on, it’s difficult. You can’t give as many details as in your conversation, and you can’t say that at that level you need to save tires or fuel.
“He couldn’t speak at all. And at the beginning we could talk to him, and then he completely lost communication. “
Regarding Giovinazzi’s hopes of being held in the seat, Vasseur said, “You don’t have to watch out for a meeting.
“On 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.”
