Kimi Raikkonen admitted his Azerbaijan Grand Prix Wasn’t that exciting for most of the race until his afternoon came to life on the final laps after the late restart.
The Alfa Romeo Racing ORLEN Driver secured himself from the Baku city tour after tenth place but the veteran Finn admitted it was surprising that it was so difficult to overtake another driver during the 51 lap race.
Räikkönen was able to catch up with the ones in front of him “relatively easily”, but found it difficult to move into position despite the long start and finish straight in Baku and the use of the Drag Reduction System (DRS).
“Not much happened in my race up to the last two laps, so it’s good to take home a point,” said Raikkonen. “Overtaking turned out to be surprisingly difficult. We were able to catch up with the cars in front of us relatively well, but we couldn’t get any further.
“The restart after the red flag was pretty hectic, we could have been better, but it could have gone wrong, so we get the point. I don’t think we could have done more in the end. “
“I think we got everything out of this race” – Antonio Giovinazzi
Teammate Antonio Giovinazzi finished eleventh, only missing points after making contact with McLaren F1 team‘s Daniel Ricciardo when restarting into the second corner, where his C41 Ferrari went into anti-stall mode.
After a crash in qualifying on Saturday, the Italian had everything to do on Sunday to meddle in the battle for points and a great start put him in the top 15 to give himself a chance.
However, a minor problem with his brakes and the decision to make an early stop to undercut some of his rivals failed him to score for a second consecutive race weekend.
“I had a great start and was able to fight for points again from the start,” said Giovinazzi. “It wasn’t an easy race because I had a bit of a problem with the brakes, which isn’t ideal on a track like this, but my pace was still quite good.
“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 made up a few positions in turn one, but in the second turn I came into contact with Ricciardo and my car stalled.
“I think we got everything out of this race, especially as the last one, and we’re so close to the points. A lot happened today, it was a pretty crazy race in the end, but we have to be happy because we scored another point with Kimi, the second race in a row for our team. “
Antonio Giovinazzi landed just outside the points in eleventh place – Photo credit: Antonin Vincent / DPPI
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