Franco Colapinto has reflected on his disastrous qualifying crash at the British GP, following his Q1 crash at the final corner.
Franco Colapinto aimed to progress beyond Q1 to get his season underway in a challenging tenure with Alpine. The Argentinian is just one of three drivers yet to score a point in 2025.
With the pressure and rumours over potentially losing his seat to Valtteri Bottas intensifying, Colapinto needed a strong performance.
Instead, with half of Q1 at the British GP remaining. Franco Colapinto hit the serrated curbs at the final corner of the track. Now a passenger, he spun and hit the barriers, bringing his session to an early end as a result of the crash.
Speaking to the media as qualifying continued, Franco Colapinto cut a dejected figure as he walked through the incident.
“Yeah, it’s just a tough quali. I struggled a bit with the grip at the beginning, the track was a bit wet and I just slide onto that curve and I lost the car unfortunately.”
Asked about his next steps following his crash, Colapinto said he had work to do with Alpine overnight.
“I think as a team we are just working to try and make everything better and just struggling a little bit with the car. We’ll try to get better for tomorrow.”
A polar opposite result for team-mate Pierre Gasly in British GP qualifying
By stark contrast, team-mate Pierre Gasly found substantial lap-time to qualify in 10th. Speaking after the session, Gasly revealed he was mystified at the result.
“Honestly it feels unreal that we made it to the top 10,” he admitted. “The whole weekend was so hard and difficult, we really had to scratch our heads to understand what was going on with the car and look like coming into the quali we thought we’ll be probably be knocked out after q1.
“[We) made a few changes stick to our thing and and just try to focus on small details and put everything together when it mattered.”
“Honestly i’m very very pleased for the whole team we managed to you know sneak in p15 to q2 and then put an amazing lap in q2 to get in p10 to get to q3 and same in q3 so very very happy with the turnaround.”
Asked if he had points on his mind for Sunday’s race as the championship intensifies, Gasly offered a pragmatic approach.
“Honestly i’m not even really thinking about the championship. Because at this stage you know, we just need to take one race at a time and you know against all odds we managed to put it in a position much better than we we expected out of the quali.
“So i think we just got to stick session after session try to to get the best out and you know um tomorrow i i know on this track we expect it to struggle and i know it’s going to be a tricky race but we’ll just fight every single car as hard as we can, and hopefully, you know getting in the top 10 at the end of the race”
