You never fight a single battle in Formula 1. The contest and its intensity is always large with too many challenges holding the power to wear you down.
Unlike cricket, where the main battle concerns the struggle for supremacy between the batsman and the bowler or where, in Basketball, you fight with five on your side, Formula 1 is more adrenaline-pumping in the sense that at the exact same time you fight with 19 other drivers, you also compete with your teammate.
Well, unless you’re a master of strategy and you get your boys to sign documents or maintain a vow of decorum so as not to fight as teammates. But what’s true is that even while Antionio Giovinazzi of the Alfa Romeo team will not be exactly contending for a shot at the podium with much quicker drivers in the front, his life in 2020 won’t be any easy come what may.
For as the driver himself put it, there lies an interesting albeit enervating challenge for him, which won’t call out to him from a distant corner. Beating Kimi Raikkonen, his teammate at Alfa Romeo will be the number one priority for the young Italian driver, who is 26.
But why’s that? Why beating Kimi Matias Raikkonen remains Alfa Romeo’s younger driver’s number one priority of sorts? What’s happened?
Surely, a healthy rivalry and often, an intense teammate battle is always great for the end-result of the racing marquee. We have seen that the closer Rosberg and Hamilton went against one another in those memorable contests of 2014 – 2016, the better the results became for their Mercedes team, with the German driver finally managing to outpace his great Briton challenger.
Having said that, what’s Antonio Giovinazzi’s strategy?
First up, the Martina Franca-born driver shared his excitement to behind the wheels of an F1 car after what’s clearly been a desperate wait for the sport to resume and he perfectly encapsulated that feeling sharing the following:
“After the hard enforced break in Italy, getting into a Formula 1 car feels like returning to normal. I cannot wait.”
But he’d come to the main point and explain why beating F1’s Iceman was the big key task as he’d add, “If my dreams are to continue, I have to beat Kimi this year.”
That being said, perhaps it will serve one’s memory right to recall what the promising Italian talent mustered in 2019. Back in 2019, the-then F1 debutant who drove one full season managed just 14 points in all and stood a lowly 17th on the Driver’s Standings.
That being said, he was part of some incredible efforts especially being a midfielder, such as the 2019 Austrian Grand Prix, which earned him his first-ever F1 points courtesy a fighting tenth-place finish, the likes of which he’d hopefully improve on as we approach the big curtain-raiser for 2020.
That told, who’ll hold edge in the teammate battle between Raikkonen and Giovinazzi and why?
For now, time is the only answer. Patience does have its rewards; lights out and away we go at Spielberg! Bring it on.