Franco Colapinto was 16th in the only test of the San Pablo GP

The Argentine was far from Pierre Gasly in the first contact with the track on the 21st round of F1. The next activity: qualifying for the sprint.

Franco Colapinto took to the track for the first time after the announcement that confirmed him as an Alpine driver for 2026. The joy of the officialization that the Enstone team had already taken before starting the United States GP activity was the Argentine’s best moment in F1 in a long time. The performance of his A525 is not good and in the only training session for the San Pablo GP, date 21, he gave another example.

A while after arriving at Interlagos dressed in the Argentine National Team shirt and giving a conference to Spanish-speaking journalists in which he spoke about his continuity in 2026, he went out to spin on the Brazilian track. To begin with, he did a long stint with hard tires (like everyone else) with the aim of working on race pace. The thing is that the São Paulo event is a weekend with a sprint format and it was the only chance to try.

There were 19 laps with hard tires in which he achieved 1m12s338 as the best time, far from his teammate Pierre Gasly, who clocked 1m11s597 in the best of his 22 laps with the hardest compound.. In race pace the two Alpines were even, in the range of 1m14s1 to 1m14s3.

The classification simulation was with the middle decks. Gasly had to abort his first attempt. Finally it dialed 1m10s681 to be seventh, a result that may seem encouraging, but it must be taken into account that the two Ferraris and the two Red Bulls did not set strong records. For Colapinto, with the mediums, clocked 1m11s160 and managed to close the gap with respect to the Frenchman that they had with the hard compound, but he was still far away.

In the afternoon the classification for the sprint will take place, always with the latent possibility of rain. The training began with overcast skies and ended with sunshine. The weather in San Pablo is treacherous. Of course, for Saturday, the day of the sprint and the qualifying for Sunday, it seems that rain will be the special guest.