Giovinazzi drove “silent race” after Russian GP F1 radio outage

The Italian, who started 16th on the Sochi grid after a gearbox penalty, dropped positions following a hit from Mick Schumacher's Haas at Turn 2 on the opening lap and went on to endure a difficult race due to a communications outage.

Giovinazzi’s radio silence prevented him from capitalising on a late downpour by pitting early for intermediates as he missed the chance to potentially join his teammate Kimi Raikkonen in the points and ultimately finished in P16.

“A silent race with no radio again from lap one to the end,” Giovinazzi said.

“I had contact on lap one and then I lost some time behind the Haas and Williams.

“Then no radio from lap one, so no communication with the team,” he added. "That didn’t help with these conditions.

“I had no communication with the team, and in this case, you need communication, so just a difficult race from lap one to the end.”

Alfa Romeo’s head of trackside engineering Xevi Pujolar said Giovinazzi was initially able to receive messages from his race engineer but that the team could not hear him, before all communication was lost.

“It was a tricky race with the fuel management and then especially towards the end of the race with the weather,” Pujolar explained.

“Initially for a few laps we had the radio where he could hear us but we could not hear him and after a few laps we lost everything.

“So it was getting a bit difficult with what we wanted to achieve and effecting his performance. We could not run to our optimum due to that.”