24 Hours of Le Mans winner Antonio Giovinazzi: 'The driving style is not much different to F1'
The former Alfa Romeo F1 driver returned to the top step of a motorsport podium on Sunda𒁏y, when he, alongside James Calado and Alessandro Pier Guidi, guided Ferrari to their first outright win of the Le Mans 24 Hours since 1965.
It was a momentous da💎y for Ferrari, who ended Toyota’s dominance of the iconic race.
Speaking to TopGear, Giovinazzi explained how driving a Ferr🐭ari hypercar felt relative to an F1 car.
“To be honest, the driving style is not much different from an F1 car,” he said. “It’s a racing car so you drive it the same way. Of course, it’s 200kg heavier [than an F1 car] so you can feel this under braking, the change of direction on the car is more ‘lazy’. But I was surprised in the spee🌠d coming here, in the last sector, how much you can feel the downforce we have… it’s quite impressive.
“So the Porsche corn💝er is pretty fast. This is a re🍬al car, a proper car…
"Yesterday [during Hyperpole] we touched almost 350km/h (217mph), so it’s a fast ca🐼r as well. So yeah, it’s nice to drive. That’s in quali. In the race we don’t push to the maximum because we have traffic, we need to overtake cars seven or eight times during a lap."
Even though Giovinazzi has raced i🔯n other legendary races such as the Monaco Grand Prix, he hailed the Le Mans race as the “great🦋est".
“In t🥃erms of the car’s balance, it depends on theꦓ track,” he added. “It’s a track-by-track thing. At Spa it was fine, but then you have a track where there’s more wear on the rear. How do I like to set the car up? [smiles] I like stability. If there’s some understeer I don’t care, as long as there is stability.
“In terms of the car’s speed, yes, I was a bit surprised. In terms of race pace, Toyota is still ahead of us. But we put our car on the front row so the first target i🔴s done. Now we need to go to the second one, and put pressure on Toyota. It’s a long race and if we can put pressure on them maybe they’ll make a mistake and we can get in front of them.
“Toyota has lots of experience, they know how to win at Le Mans. Is this the grea🔯test motor race of them all? For me, yes.”
With a sharp eye for F1’s controversies and sto⛦rylines, Connor is the heartbeat of our unbiased reporting.
