Alfa Romeo driver Antonio Giovinazzi is willing to try to follow Kimi Raikkonen's driving style this year because it would be a "mistake" for him to spurn his teammate's experience.

Giovinazzi has earned a full-time F1 drive at the re-badged Sauber team alongside 2007 world champion Raikkonen, who lost his Ferrari seat to Charles Leclerc.

After sampling Alfa’s C38 for the first time on day two of pre-season testing at Barcelona, Giovinazzi said he will try to drive like Raikkonen to help further the team’s development.

“I think it will be just a mistake to do it a different way from him,” said Giovinazzi when asked by Motorsport.com if their driving styles were similar or he would go in his own direction.

“Now my target is to work from him, just learn from him.

“The right thing for the team as well is to go in the same way, and also it's maybe better for myself to go in Kimi's way, and drive in Kimi's way.

“Just [to] make a lot easier also for the team.”

Giovinazzi told Motorsport.com earlier this month that he felt “lucky” to be partnering Raikkonen, a veteran of 291 grand prix starts.

After two years of development work for Ferrari on the team’s simulator and various on-track opportunities with the Maranello team and Sauber, Giovinazzi said working for himself in pre-season testing made a good change.

“It’s a different testing [experience] now,” he said. “Finally I can work for me, for my car, and this is what I’m doing.

“I’m trying to take all the feedback, give to the team and try to work a lot with the team and with Kimi as well to build a good car.

“I followed Kimi’s day [on Monday], we can do a really good job together.

“Kimi has a lot more experience than me, so I just need to listen to him and give my feedback.”

Giovinazzi echoed Raikkonen’s complimentary comments about Alfa’s car, describing it as “easy to drive”.After a “positive” first day of testing the Italian said he would do everything possible to make the most of an opportunity he is relishing.

“I waited too long, two years, but finally today I was really happy,” said Giovinazzi, who crashed out of the second of two substitute appearances for Sauber at the start of 2017.

“[It felt] like I woke up for Christmas.

“I just want to jump in on Thursday, learn as much as I can and improve the car and make sure in Melbourne everything works well.

“I know this will be my full season, so I just need to do a lot of work.

“When Melbourne will start, everything will come really fast.”

Formula 1 venue Circuit of the Americas faces a huge financial hit after the Texas state government refused to release the funds that the track has received every year since it began to host the United States Grand Prix.

The business model for the circuit and its biggest race is built on the annual payment from the Major Events Trust Fund that has always covered the sanction fee paid to the F1 organisation, and which in effect makes the Grand Prix a “free” event for the venue.

The money has always been paid some months after a race has taken place, because it has to be shown to have derived from tax income received from the extra influx of visitors generated by the event.

The track has received payments of over $20m each year since 2012, and was expecting to receive $25.8m for the 2018 race.

However the state has rejected COTA’s formal application for its 2018 payment on a legal technicality, claiming that it did not submit a human trafficking prevention plan prior to the deadline of September 19th, a month before the race. This requirement is related to a clampdown by the Texas authorities on prostitution.

A spokesman for Texas Governor Greg Abbott told the Statesman: “In this case, the law is clear that if a human trafficking prevention plan is not submitted 30 days prior to an event, a reimbursement from the Major Events Fund cannot be issued.

"The State of Texas and COTA have a productive partnership that has had a tremendous economic impact on the city of Austin and the state as a whole, and our office is already working with COTA on next year’s race.”

COTA executive vice president Rick Abbott responded to the development by issuing a statement via Twitter saying that a plan had already been implemented for MotoGP.

“The anti-trafficking plan was on file for other events throughout the year, so it is not a question of implementation,” he said. “In April of 2018, the Circuit of the Americas operations team developed a human trafficking plan to be included in the Emergency Action Plan (EAP) for the 2018 MotoGP Grand Prix of the Americas. That plan stayed in place throughout the entire 2018 race season.”

He remains optimistic that a solution can be found: “As the reimbursement for the 2017 USGP was not paid until 10 months after the event, we remain hopeful the 2018 issues can be resolved.”

The state’s suggestion that it is “already working with COTA” indicates that in theory there should be no problem with payments for 2019 and beyond, if the paperwork is in order.

Nevertheless, the loss of the 2018 funding will be a huge blow for an organisation that cannot afford to lose such a significant amount, with so much having been invested in the construction of the track.

The funding deal was originally negotiated by circuit founder Tavo Hellmund with then state comptroller Susan Combs, and it was a crucial step in convincing Bernie Ecclestone that a race would in Austin would be viable.

The current arrangement covers an F1 race anywhere in the state of Texas, and is not specifically tied to COTA – so in theory an event in another city could claim the funding.

Mercedes says changing its front wing concept to a Ferrari-style version is a project that would take months to complete, but it accepts it must be "open-minded" to work out if its rival's idea is better.

The new 2019 Formula 1 aero regulations have thrown up a fascinating divergence of approaches about how best to manage airflow at the front of the car.

While teams like Mercedes and Red Bull have opted for more traditional front wing designs, Ferrari and Alfa Romeo have done something totally different – with the outer edges of the front wing sloping downwards towards the endplate to help produce outwash.

Ferrari's strong start to pre-season testing last week, allied to Mercedes' low-key beginning, has prompted questions about whether or not the front wing designs are playing a part in their performance.

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff said his team doing its own thing had served it well over recent years, but reckoned that it should not ignore the possibility that there could be better ideas out there.

"You need to be open minded," he said at an event for Mercedes' title sponsor Petronas. "We have always had a different design philosophy to many of the other teams.

"We have gone longer than the other teams. We have never had rake in the car compared to some of the other teams. It is not because we believed our concept was superior in every angle, but we believe that the whole car power unit package was the best for us that way.

"Having said that, with new regulatory change, you need to be open minded about what the others have done. And if something functions better, every team at the moment will look at what the others have put on the car and try it themselves."

Pushed on if the team would make a switch, Wolff said: "These are things you don't do from one day to another. If you were to think to change the aerodynamic concept of the car, it is not a matter of days or weeks. It is a matter of months."

Wolff's timeline of it taking several months to switch front wing concepts is in line with what Renault technical director Nick Chester predicts it would take.

"If you decided you were on the wrong tack and you needed to go to a very different front wing concept, it wouldn't be easy," Chester said, when asked by Motorsport.com about how challenging it would be to totally switch concepts.

"You would put it on and find that it was a long way down to start with. Then, you would have to develop with it for a couple of months to get it working, so it would not be easy switching – and definitely not from one end of the scale to the other."

Chester said his team was still evaluating the different concepts of wings, and suggested that over the course of the season there could be some convergence between outfits on the best design.

"We are obviously always interested in what other people are doing, so we are looking at the other options out there," he said.

"There are a wide variety between trying to get as much outboard loading as you can and trying to use the outwash to push the wheel wake out, to try to unload that and not stress the flap and the endplate structures too much.

"So there is a bit of a balance to be struck and over the season we will see how everyone develops, and I expect there could be a tendency to go one way. But on the other hand there are cars performing quite well out there with different solutions."

Force India technical director Andy Green said it was not impossible that the different approaches remained, as teams juggled how to balance getting downforce from the front wing over the benefits of outwash.

"Teams like Mercedes have done their own philosophy for quite a long time," he said. "They've stood out as being different and they've won five championships. So there's always room for another philosophy, and they've proved that over the years.

"We may end up with several, one or two different philosophies around the front wing and both of them could be equally as competitive. We'll have to wait and see."

mercedes and ferrari wanted to operate under different terms to the rest of the teams, and us, as producers, and netflix as the broadcasting platform, didn’t feel comfortable with that.

It was going to be all-or-nothing and if those terms were good enough for the eight other teams, it should have been good enough for mercedes and ferrari, too.

My view is that they did a slight disservice to the fans and the sport by not taking part.

Red Bull has already considered the prospect of taking grid penalties during the 2019 season in order to continue the development of their new Honda power unit.



The team switched from Renault power after a disappointing period with the French manufacturer since the beginning of the hybrid era in 2014.

In a risky swap, Red Bull will be powered by Honda in 2019 alongside Toro Rosso however the team hasn't ruled out taking yet more grid penalties throughout this season in order to develop the Japanese power unit further.

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner admitted that it was something the team was considering already.

"You saw in previous years if you pick the penalties at the right venues," he is quoted by Crash.net.

“In Russia last year Max was already back in the top five by lap six so if you pick the right venue and assists the development of the power unit then strategically you can lessen the pain.

"I think Honda have had a good winter and certainly they are reducing that gap significantly but of course what you don’t know is what the others have done.

“If they have found another 50kw then we’ve got a big issue. We’ve been very impressed by the approach of Honda and the progress that they’ve made.

“For us it’s a vital piece of the jigsaw to get us into a competitive position not just for this year but for next year and potentially beyond.”

Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton says he has no interest in following Fernando Alonso's lead by one day targeting racing's triple crown.

Now retired from F1, Alonso has already added the 24 Hours of Le Mans to his triple crown tally and is now targeting victory at the Indy 500 to complete the feat that also includes the Formula 1 Monaco Grand Prix. If Alonso, a two-time F1 champ, wins at Indy, he will become only the second driver after Graham Hill to win the Monaco GP, Le Mans and the Indy 500.

However, five-time world champion Hamilton says the triple crown is not exactly on his radar.

"I had never heard about the triple crown until last year," Hamilton told Radio Marca at a sponsor event in Turin, Italy. "It's not something that particularly interests me or is something I want to do."