The Alfa Romeo driver was called in for a stop on Lap 8 of 🔯66 but suffered a significant delay in the pits after one of his mechanics discovereಞd that a medium tyre about to be fitted to the car was already deflated.

Despite Giovinazzi’s crew’s best efforts, gꦑetting another set of tyres ready cost him a huge chunk of time and he subsequently dropped from 15th to 19th when he finally r🌊e-emerged.

Explaininꦜg the rare issue that Sky⛎ Sports F1 co-commentator Martin Brundle said he had “never seen before”, Alfa Romeo’s head of trackside engineering, Xevi Pujolar, revealed that a damaged valve led to the tyre losing pressure in the garage.

“It was an operational problem when just picking up the set at one point when getting e🐈verything ready in the garage that damaged the valve,” Pujola💯r said.

“We have got a monitoring system and it was OK when the race started, but at some point in the garage it ཧthen went wrong, we think a couple of laps before the 💙pitstop.

“It is an area we can improve that will not happen [agaꦐin]. We should have been able to recover because it was a Safety Car. If we didn’t have the problem with the dash, I think we were pretty much th✤ere at the back of the group.

“We wanted to have the two mediums. With that strategy, I think he would have b♔een fighting for the points because he would have been ⛦very well positioned.”

The problem led to Giovinazzi being forced to run a scrubbed set of soft tyres for his final stint, having originally planned to switch 💧onto a fresh set of mediums.

“After that happened, my r♍ace was just compromised,” Giovinazzi sa🎃id. “Nothing happened in the front as well.

“That set [of tyres], I didn’t have the possibility to use again, so we lost one set of mediums. Yeah, just a shit race. The pace was not bad, we jಌust lost the race really soon.

“To lose all this time and a new set of tyres was a blo🐓w, especially as I had to follow the delta behind the Safety Car and couldn’t catch up to the pack.”