16/04/2021
NEWS STORY
Friday practice at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix wasn't a straightforward affair, with the unforgiving nature of the Imola circuit contributing to bringing out red flags that interrupted both the morning and afternoon sessions.
The disruption to the flow of the day, however, didn't appear to faze the Alfa Romeo Racing ORLEN team, which had a positive first day of action. Both cars were on track for considerable amounts of time, meaning both sides of the garage finished the day with all boxes ticked off in their respective programmes.
A productive day of work is what the doctor prescribed ahead of tomorrow's qualifying session: with the Autodromo Enzo and Dino Ferrari a notoriously difficult place for overtakes, the grid-setting Saturday showdown will be even more important than usual as claiming a good grid position makes Sunday's job all that much easier.
After a good day, hopefully comes a good night: time to crunch the data, then. Some positive indications from today leave us confident in being in a good shape when qualifying comes calling...
Kimi Raikkonen: "It wasn't a bad day for us, even though the timesheets don't really show it. We couldn't put a lap together in the short runs, so I am not too worried: let's see what we can do tomorrow. There are things we can improve a bit tonight, as always, so hopefully we can get a bit more performance out of the car. The objective is the same - to clear Q1 and fight for a spot as high on the grid as we can."
Antonio Giovinazzi: "We had a good start of the weekend. FP1 was a good session, a bit compromised with the radio and data issue - but that applies to everyone. I was very happy with the car in FP2, both in the short and long runs. We need to adjust a few things to make the car even better for qualifying as we know it will be tight - even more than it was in Bahrain. It's hard to say where we expect to be, as a tiny difference between a lap and the other can make a big difference: we need to put together a perfect lap in qualifying."
Check out our Friday gallery from Imola, here.