Franco Colapinto completed the only test of the Chinese GP

The Argentine driver had problems on his Alpine, but recovered at the end of the session and was just under three tenths behind his teammate Pierre Gasly.

Complicated. This was Franco Colapinto’s first contact with the Shanghai track, a place where he had never toured. He was barely a minute into the only free session of the second round of Formula 1 when he spun spectacularly with his Alpine. The sequence was strange, although not so strange in this new era of Formula 1. Several drivers had already experienced strange crashes in the Bahrain tests in the slow corner area, at the time of battery regeneration. The rear axle gets stuck and that’s what happened to the Argentine. Moments later, the same thing happened to Lewis Hamilton with his Ferrari. And they were also scared of the McLarens of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri. Colapinto was able to get out of the gravel and continued on the track.

The Chinese GP has the first of the six sprint races of the season scheduled and, with the new technical regulations and the complexity of the power unit, all the drivers had to rehearse as much as possible to be able to find clear answers to that blessed topic of energy regeneration. The cars were seen slowing down in the final part of the long 1.2 kilometer straight, although the transmission avoided showing the moment on board after the criticism that came from social networks of the new regulations.

For the Argentine driver the challenge was even greater because he had never turned on the Chinese track and, unlike other years, the simulator is not as useful. The correlation between virtual and reality changes significantly with the new era of F1. Colapinto first dedicated himself to laps on soft tires, like his teammate Pierre Gasly. In the middle part of the session, both drivers refueled and tried race simulation.

That simulation stint was six laps and compared to Gasly he lost in the first four, in a difference that started at one second and fell to two tenths in the fourth. In the two that closed the half dozen, the Argentine was two tenths and one tenth faster.

Then the big scare would come: Colapinto’s Alpine stopped in the middle of the pit road. Issues of new power units. The Mercedes driver crashed, so much so that the Argentine’s head was seen shaking at the silence.. The Enstone team mechanics began a marathon to look for the A526, but when they were arriving, the engine started again.

The closing of the round was for both drivers with soft tires. Finally, Gasly clocked 1m34s676 and placed tenth. Colapinto, meanwhile, clocked 1m34s947 and placed 15th. The positive thing for Alpine was that, especially with Gasly, they again saw some of that performance they had had in the preseason in Bahrain and that had the French as candidates to fight for the top of the middle zone. It was just a test, the only one of the entire weekend, but compared to the start in Australia the A526 was more competitive. In Melbourne there are many fast areas and that front wing in which the engineers got the design wrong took its toll. Shanghai has slower zones and Alpine was mixed in the fight with Haas, Audi and Racing Bulls. In fact, from Oliver Bearman (seventh) to Liam Lawson (11th) there was 347 thousandths of a difference, with Max Verstappen stuck in the middle in eighth place. Nico Hülkenberg was ninth and Gasly, tenth.

The next start will be for the sprint classification, the short race that will be held on Saturday, at dawn in Latin America. There, Alpine must confirm the greater proximity it demonstrated to the middle zone during training.