Two-day weekend helped "aggressive" Alfa Romeo score double-points finish

Alfa Romeo's head of trackside engineering Xevi Pujolar believes the lack of Friday running at Formula 1 events "helps the show" and contributed to a double-points finish for the team at Imola.

A two-day weekend format was employed at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, limiting the teams to a single 90-minute practice session ahead of qualifying.

Pujolar believes the unknown entity of entering the race with reduced knowledge on tyre performance and the resulting split in strategies between teams increases the excitement.

"We like it when there's a lack of running on Friday," he said. "Somehow, it puts a bit of a question mark and some people go a bit conservative with the tyres and then the temperatures also change. I think that helps the show.

"Maybe on this occasion, we were a bit on the aggressive side, not with Kimi [Raikkonen] but with Antonio [Giovinazzi] but then we were trying to cover both ends.

"With Antonio, we were covering the early pitstops, and then with Kimi, the late ones in case of different safety car scenarios."

Raikkonen and Giovinazzi both finished in the top 10 for only the third time since the pair started driving together at the start of 2019.

Pujolar pointed to the lack of tyre data as a contributing factor to Giovinazzi's strong result but conceded he was surprised to see other teams, who were running harder tyre compounds, covering off the Italian's earlier pit-stop.

"We were surprised that even when Antonio boxed quite early with the softs, then people [who] were starting with the medium were covering us," he explained.

"Trying to protect as well, going with the hard. I think this, with the tyres, is what’s making the race more interesting in the midfield battle."

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