10/05/2021
NEWS STORY
Not for the first time this season, when it came to Alfa Romeo, Lady Luck appeared to be looking in the other direction.
Just weeks after Kimi Raikkonen was essentially robbed of a points finish due to what can only be described as bad luck, Alfa Romeo - whose logo is a four leaf clover - was left ruing its misfortune once again.
Pitting in the moments after the safety car was deployed when Yuki Tsunoda stopped on track, one of the crew working on Antonio Giovinazzi's car realised that one of the new tyres was flat, meaning the Italian had to wait while another set was brought out.
Then, on rejoining the race - in last position - he had to observe the FIA's delta time on his dashboard as opposed to speeding up and rejoining the pack ahead.
All of which totally negated his early stop, the Italian eventually crossing the line in 15th.
"My steering wheel was not working behind the safety car because it was still the delta to follow," he subsequently explained. "So when I started at the green flag I was 10s behind... so yeah, a shit race from beginning to end."
"It was an operational problem," explained the team's head of track engineering, Xevi Pujolar according to Motorsport.com, "when picking up the set at one point when getting everything ready in the garage that damaged the valve.
"We've got a monitoring system," he added. "It was okay when the race started, but at some point in the garage it went wrong, a couple of laps before before the pitstop.
"For sure it is an area that we can we can improve," he admitted, "that shouldn't happen. But at least we should have been able to recover, because it was a safety car.
"So if we didn't have the other problem with the dash, I think we were pretty much there at the back of the group issue. It's just that we wanted to have the two mediums, that was the plan with the strategy.
"I think it would have been fighting for the points. Because he would have been very well positioned on what we could do with the tyres with two mediums. But anyway, it is what it is."
Asked about the dash issue, he said: "We're talking to the FIA, we can't understand why we had this problem. It's a shame, because the time that we lost, and we lost already one set of tyres, then we lost time that cost him, and then he was falling in traffic. And it cost him a lot in the race."