When Red Bull-backed Pierre Gasly was pushed to the final race of the 2016 GP2 championship by Prema team mate Antonio Giovinazzi, it felt like Formula 1 was being shown a glimpse of its future.
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Five years on, Gasly’s stock is high while Giovinazzi appears to have completed his 62nd and possibly final Grand Prix in the sport’s premier category.
Although Ferrari offered him a reserve role alongside Mick Schumacher for the 2022 season, there is no clear path back to a full-time race seat for the 28-year-old Italian.
Giovinazzi’s F1 career started in unusual circumstances. Despite being the only Italian to race in Formula 1 over the last decade, he was never part of the Ferrari Driver Academy. After a strong rookie GP2 season that saw him narrowly miss the title, Ferrari invited the then-22-year-old to test in their Maranello simulator and signed him as their third driver for 2017.
What began as a development role turned into an unexpected debut when Sauber’s Pascal Wehrlein injured himself during the Race of Champions and missed pre-season testing. Ferrari loaned Giovinazzi to Sauber for testing, and when Wehrlein subsequently declared himself unfit to race after Friday in Albert Park, Giovinazzi was given the rare opportunity to step into a Grand Prix seat.
With the new high-downforce cars for 2017 challenging many young drivers, Giovinazzi impressed on debut in Melbourne. He missed Q2 by just two tenths of a second despite only an hour on the track at that circuit and finished the race in a tidy 12th, ahead of Stoffel Vandoorne’s McLaren.
His second weekend, in China, proved tougher: two similar incidents exiting the final corner—one in qualifying and another in the race—left him apologising to the Sauber team that had given him the chance to race.
Once Wehrlein recovered his seat, Giovinazzi returned to Ferrari duties as third driver but continued to gain experience through Friday practice outings, first with Haas and later with Sauber. He also raced a Ferrari GT entry at Le Mans, but competitive track time in single-seaters remained limited.
When Ferrari promoted Charles Leclerc to the factory team in 2019, a Sauber seat opened. With Sauber rebranded as Alfa Romeo and the appeal of an Italian driver in a team carrying an iconic Italian name, Giovinazzi was handed his first full F1 season.
Early in 2019, his lack of recent racing showed. Through the first half of the year he managed only one points finish, while team mate Kimi Räikkönen scored in the top ten on seven occasions. As the season progressed Giovinazzi found his rhythm and began to out-qualify his experienced team mate more often, though race results were still inconsistent. A late-race mistake at Spa, which saw him crash out from a points position on the final lap, stood out as a costly error.
Nevertheless, Giovinazzi delivered a composed drive in the chaotic closing laps of the Brazilian Grand Prix to finish fifth behind Räikkönen, giving Alfa Romeo their best result of the year. That performance, and the improvement shown across the season, earned him a second year with the team in 2020.
Alfa Romeo’s 2020 campaign suffered from the limitations of Ferrari’s power unit, but Giovinazzi started the year strongly with a ninth-place finish after outperforming Räikkönen in qualifying and the race. Over the season he often beat his team mate in qualifying but then struggled to match Räikkönen’s race pace. Team orders asked him to yield position on several occasions—at the Red Bull Ring and at Monza—and he again crashed out at Spa while Räikkönen called for team intervention.
He finished 2020 level on points with Räikkönen, a respectable tally that prompted team principal Frédéric Vasseur to describe his contract extension for 2021 as “thoroughly deserved.”
Giovinazzi’s third full season, in 2021, produced his strongest qualifying form: he held an 8-1 advantage over Räikkönen in the early part of the year. Still, race results rarely matched his grid performances and he often finished behind his team mate. In Turkey his refusal to immediately let Räikkönen through likely cost the team a points finish as they closed on Esteban Ocon, who was running a different strategy.
Despite improved pace, points were scarce: Giovinazzi scored only twice and finished 11th on four occasions. Relations with his team were tested in Mexico when he felt Alfa Romeo had asked him to pit too early from a good position, watching his chances vanish while Räikkönen secured eighth place.
By the end of 2021, team dynamics and opportunities elsewhere left Giovinazzi vulnerable. Räikkönen was approaching retirement and moves across the grid, including George Russell’s promotion at Mercedes and Valtteri Bottas’ availability, reshaped driver options. Alfa Romeo’s discussions with Alpine about placing Guanyu Zhou in the team made Giovinazzi’s future there uncertain.
Giovinazzi announced he would leave Alfa Romeo and Formula 1 for the 2022 season to join Dragon’s Formula E programme. Reflecting on his time in F1, he expressed pride in his development as a driver and as a person.
“I’m happy with myself, with the progress,” he said. “I grew up like a driver, like a person. If I see myself in race one in 2019 and see myself now, I’m for sure a better driver and a better person.”
“I always [try] in my career to think positive, and I want to think that this is not my last race,” he added ahead of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. “For now, I will focus on my new challenge, but we do hope that in 2022 I can come back.”
Ferrari retained Giovinazzi as a reserve driver for 2022, so the door to a future in Formula 1 remains ajar. Yet for a return to a full-time seat he may still need another unexpected opportunity—much like the one that launched his career back in 2017.
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