Antonio Giovinazzi aims for late-season improvements after taking on ‘another world’ in Formula E

Antonio Giovinazzi departed the Formula One grid at the end of the 2021 season and, despite keeping a role as a reserve driver with Ferrari, Alfa Romeo and Haas this year, his primary focus is elsewhere for now.

Race days for the Italian now belong in Formula E, the all-electric FIA championship which is soon headed to London.

It has been a tricky adjustment and learning curve for Giovinazzi though, with his team Dragon-Penske yet to score a point through 12 rounds of racing, ahead of the final double-header weekends of the season in England and then Seoul, South Korea.

While each racing discipline has its own regulations, driving styles and manoueverability to get to grips with, the influence of the EV software and prioritisation for battery regeneration makes Formula E an entirely different beast, which the 28-year-old has found entirely alien to anything he has experienced previously.

“Unfortunately it’s a completely different car and format. Everything is different, from what I learned in the past in different categories and F1, nothing works here!” he explained.

“How you need to brake, the mentality in the race to not push and [the] need to save energy, recharge the battery...it’s completely different. That was one of the things that made me want to come here to be honest, to learn new things, because in my career I drove so many cars and the only one missing was Formula E.

“[But it’s] another world, for a rookie it’s not the best championship because you don’t have much time in the car: a session of 30 minutes, a new track, one day sometimes. It’s difficult to put it all together.

“Berlin is two different tracks in two days - not tough tracks, but you have to learn them and we were not really fast there.”

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