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 discovered that a medium tyre about to be fitted 🅘to the car was ๊already deflated.

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

Explaining the rare issue that Sky Sports F1 co-commentator Martin Brundle said he had “ne๊ver seen before”, Alfa Romeo’s head of trackside eng🅠ineering, Xevi Pujolar, revealed that a damaged valve led to the tyre losing pressure in the garage.

“It was an operational problꦬem when just picking up♑ the set at one point when getting everything ready in the garage that damaged the valve,” Pujolar said.

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

“It is aℱn area we can improve that will not happen [again]. 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 there at the back of the group.

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

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

“After that happened, my race was 𝕴just compromised,” Giovinazzi said. “Nothing happen𒈔ed 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 just lost the race really soon.

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