Franco Colapinto and one step forward in Singapore

The Alpine team worked during the night at the tuning of the A525 and the Argentine improved his time, shrink the gap with the tip and beat Pierre Gasly, who was worse than Friday.

Franco Colapinto closed the first day of the Singapore GP, 18th F1 date. He did not feel comfortable with his alpìne at any time of the two batches of trials and needed changes. The biggest problem was at the entrance of the curves and that generated unpredictability, a very complex situation for a pilot to have confidence in a car to run between walls as occurs in the urban of Marina Bay.

Colapinto rolled up and put side by side with the engineers of the Estone team on Friday night to find a different path in the tuning of the car. It is not simple, because the A525 is very hard chassis and that complicates in the multiple potholes of the Singapurense street and, as if that were not enough, it is almost impossible to attack the pianos.

After shuffling options, the changes were finally chosen to make in the car for the third training this Saturday morning. In the case of the Argentine, it worked. Franco achieved better performance than the first day and clearly defeated his partner Pierre Gasly. The ex-Williams scored 1M31S047 in his best round, surpassed the Frenchman for 596 thousandths, was 16th and was 899 thousandths of Max Verstappen, the fastest.

On Friday, Colapinto had achieved 1M33S139 as the best turn and was 2S425 from the tip (Oscar Piastri had been the fastest). For Buenos Aires, the most important thing was that it was not a single round that took out of the galley, was consisting of fast turns, always faster than Gasly. It substantially improved the entrance to the curves and achieved more confidence.

Colapinto lived three moments of anxiety in the practice that lasted 50 minutes (he spent ten minutes stopped with a red flag for the accident of Liam Lawson). From the outset, with a pass long in a curve, then it was a touch to the wall and, on the closure, it almost ends in touch with Verstappen when it opened to give way to Gasly, who came in a launched turn.

For the pilot number 43, the beginning of the second day of activity in the urban of Marina Bay was a step forward. Not so for Alpine, because in the case of Gasly it seemed to have lost its course. Far from Colapinto, although he improved his time in eight tenths with respect to Friday, the Frenchman was not comfortable in the A525 and failed to close a good turn. The second part of the track is the one that most complicated the Gaul. Surely, former Alpha Tauri will ask for changes before qualy.