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Antonio Giovinazzi praises Kimi Raikkonen for his own progress

Antonio Giovinazzi praises Kimi Raikkonen for his own progress

16-08-2019 15:27

Bevan Youl

Alfa Romeo Racing’s Antonio Giovinazzi has praised how Kimi Raikkonen has helped his own development in Formula 1 as well as the teams while admitting that his performances look worse because of the Finn.

Raikkonen has been in Formula 1 since 2001, winning the World Championship with Ferrari in 2007 before taking a year out of the sport in 2010 and returning, amassing a total of over 300 race starts.
 
While Giovinazzi is in his rookie season in F1 with Alfa after having been in reserve roles for Ferrari, Haas, and Sauber before but has only acquired one point from a 10th placed finish in Austria compared to the Finn’s 31.
 
Giovinazzi said (quoted by MotorsportWeek): “You have positive things and negative things.
 
“The positive thing is you can learn from him, watch his data, watch what he’s doing in meetings or on the track or whatever.
 
“You can learn how much is possible compared to a normal driver – he’s a World Champion driver so he’s like a target for you.
 
“From the other side of course he’s a World Champion driver and also in terms of the result he will be always there, he will never make a mistake, he has a lot of experience, he knows what to do.
 
“So sometimes my race pace can be less compared to Kimi, but just because he knows what he wants, knows what to do, he’s been there 20 years already.”
 
Despite the different results to Raikkonen the Italian is happy to have him there for advice as a driver.
 
“From my side I’m really happy to have Kimi because he’s a really fast driver, still really fast, with a lot of experience, if you ask him something he will reply to me,” he added
 
“From race one to now I grew up a lot and I think this is also because of Kimi, because I’m watching him and everything.”