Franco Colapint
The Argentine suffered with the lack of Alpine speed throughout the weekend, locked in the background on a track without surpass chances and ended 13th.
Flavio Briatore wrote Alpine’s three commandments before the Emilia-Romagna GP: to be fast, do not collide and add points. Franco Colapint’s debut in Icola did not comply, perhaps, with the most important of all because he suffered an accident during the classification. After that clash, the other two were mortgaged. Thus he arrived at the GP of Monaco, eighth date of the season, and the Argentine managed to have a clean weekend, because on a track where any error is impact had no problem. Of course, for the other two commandments, the Estone team is far away.
It is known that Saturdays are the key days in Monte-Carlo. A good classification can give a chance to add points. A bad qualy is to throw the garbage tacho on the weekend. And Alpine had a very bad classification, with a lack of speed in its A525 that condemned Colapint and Pierre Gasly to have to leave from the ninth row. The chances of fulfilling the command to write down, were impossible. In fact, Briatore raised his hand on Saturday, after the qualy, and he was sincere: “We thought that when we came to Monaco we would be more competitive than we demonstrated so far. It was not a good Saturday and it is clear that we need to improve and give the pilots a faster and faster car.” This precept travels directly to Estone, although taking into account the motor failure they suffer and that the objective points to 2026 with the new regulation, it seems difficult for French cars to make a large leap in the rest of the season.
Colapint’s career could have ended in the eighth lap and because of his fellow Gasly. The Frenchman took Yuki Tsunoda in the braking of the Chicana from the tunnel exit and, with the left front suspension shattered, crossed the Chicana and passed the track, just where the Argentine passed, who with a flying avoided something that could have been double breakage. The Frenchman, the most experienced pilot, broke the commandment of not breaking in the Principality.
The FIA, to try to help the show, raised the obligatory nature of at least two arrests in boxes to change tires and use, as always, two of the three compounds it has available. “There are many possible strategies, it’s about choosing the best,” Collapint said on Saturday. Alpine decided to go out with hard tires, stopped on Vuelta 14 and placed a media game and returned to media in 27. From there, to the end. Colapinto could not pass cars on the track (normal) and they didn’t pass it (logical). But that strategy allowed him to overcome, for example, the Mercedes of Kimi Antonelli. The engineers of the silver arrows opted for a plan to take many turns and the Italian was kept both stops for the end. Error and position won for collapint. In the arrests he also surpassed Gabriel Bortoleto, Nico Hülkenberg and Yuki Tsunoda.
The 13th place in Colapinto in Monaco is good, taking into account that it had been 20º in classification (he started 18º for the sanctions to Oliver Bearman and Lance Stroll), but the important thing was to finish a clean weekend in a very complicated competition. In five days the activity of the ninth event will begin with the GP of Spain, in Barcelona. And there everything will be different, because an error does not have as much cost as in Monaco, but to fulfill the commandments of Briatore to be fast and add points, it will depend on Alpine managing to find a balance in the A525 that hides the shortcomings. Today, fight for ninth place in teams with Sauber, very little for the brand. The Argentine can leave calm, did everything the team asked in the urban intricate: turn around, gain confidence and end the car in a piece.
