ALFA ROMEO’S 2020 SO FAR

The 2020 Formula 1 season has been significantly less bountiful than last year for Alfa Romeo. The Sauber-run team, as with Haas and the works Ferrari squad, is severely undermined by an engine-power deficit. Remarkably, Alfa is holding on to the eighth place in the constructors’ championship that it secured last season, despite taking only three points finishes so far. The real indicator of its lack of results in the current campaign, however, is its points tally, which is currently five, 57 down on its 2019 total.

Both Kimi Raikkonen and Antonio Giovinazzi have taken a ninth place apiece, with those two results coming in the season’s two chaotic races: the season-opening Austrian Grand Prix and the Tuscan GP at Mugello. In the former, Raikkonen shed a wheel at the late safety-car restart while running just behind his team-mate, on course to nick a point had he stayed there, and in the latter he took his first points of the season despite picking up a five-second penalty for entering the pitlane too late and crossing the forbidden white line on approach.

This was nevertheless an example of Raikkonen’s racing nous. He’d spotted the dust rising from Lance Stroll’s wrecked Racing Point after his high-speed off at Arrabbiata 2, and was ready to come in as soon as he saw the inevitable safety car called.

“I was looking for the board, when it comes on, and once it came I just turned,” Raikkonen explains. “I hoped with all the hectic things going on they didn’t notice it but obviously I knew straight away when I turned in that I crossed the line and I knew the rule, but it was a bit too late.”

The Alfa C39 needs to be improved in “all the areas”, according to Raikkonen, who acknowledges there is nothing to be done on the power front. As ever, the key to progressing up the order, even with that disadvantage, is aerodynamic development, but Alfa’s rivals are eyeing the same steps.

“We cannot find tenths really easily,” explains Giovinazzi, who finished 10th last time out at the Eifel GP. “But we are doing our job and I think the car is improving – especially since the first race.”

“I HOPED WITH ALL THE HECTIC THINGS GOING ON THEY DIDN’T NOTICE. I KNEW THE RULE”