Franco Colapinto and a difficult start to Saturday in Mexico

The Argentine suffered from the lack of grip on the track and in his car to finish 19th in the third practice session led by Lando Norris.

Saturday’s Mexico City GP started off difficult for Franco Colapinto. In reality, it was a continuity of what was seen throughout Alpine’s year: far away and uncompetitive. The Argentine managed to improve his mark from the first day of activity, as everyone did, but he remained at the bottom: he was 19th.

Alpine’s malaria continues in Mexico and throughout the Formula 1 season. Both Colapinto and his teammate Pierre Gasly rode the entire session with tires of the softest compound. In the first attempt, Franco was 85 thousandths ahead of the Frenchman. In the second, the Frenchman beat him by 190. Of course, fighting among themselves for the crumbs at the bottom.

On the third attempt, Colapinto narrowed the gap to 55 thousandths. For the end, they left the qualifying simulation moment and put on new soft tires. Gasly took advantage of it and nailed 1m18s412 in the key attempt. The man from Buenos Aires had to abort it because he went wide on a curve. YesHe opened the closing, and on the fifth lap of the rubber, he achieved 1m18s581 to be 19th, just behind Gasly, at 169 thousandths (Franco was faster in stages one and three, but lost a lot in stage two, the same one where he had to abort his turn with the new rubber). The Argentine was 1s948 behind Lando Norris, the fastest of the round, an enormous difference if you take into account that it is a track that the Englishman completed in 76s633s.

The Alpine duo was ahead of the Aston Martin of Fernando Alonso, who had suspension problems and could not complete his work. He didn’t even turn on soft tires. On the first day, only Alex Albon’s problem (he touched the wall in his only attempt on soft tires) prevented the Enstone cars from closing the qualifying round. The Spaniard’s inconvenience prevented him from bottom of the table in the third trial. For the classification, thinking about a chance of Q2 for one of the two A525s sounds like an impossible dream. In the third test, the Argentine was 780 thousandths behind the 15th, Carlos Sainz.