The Albon-matching elements of Colapinto's maiden F1 grand prix

Franco Colapinto only discovered that he had graduated to Formula 1 on the Tuesday before the Italian Grand Prix. Shuffling the deck and making a mid-season driver switch is bold enough, but to do so between the races of a double-header would usually border upon the audacious.

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After Zandvoort, Williams team boss James Vowles figured that Logan Sargeant's time was up. The noted improvement seen at the tail end of 2023 had not carried over through the winter; the American was once again significantly shy of Alex Albon's pace, and had not ever looked like tailing the Anglo-Thai into the points at any race this season.

When Albon was thrown out of qualifying at the Dutch GP after breaking into Q3, Sargeant's heavy FP3 shunt had denied it the chance to capitalise on a car that had proved to be solid around the coastal circuit. The point of running two cars (beyond the regulatory bounds) is to ensure that one can pick up the pieces if the other falters. Sargeant had rarely looked like doing so.

It was Vowles' hope that Colapinto could do the job. His experience (albeit limited) of the FW46 lifted him above Mick Schumacher in the reckoning, and Williams wanted to "invest" in an academy product and imbue them with the chance to prove themselves at the top table. Colapinto, the best-placed Williams-backed youngster across the junior racing landscape, was rewarded with the chance.

The Argentine's performance in FP1 at Silverstone had also been noteworthy, in an assured showing that left him just 0.4 seconds short of Albon in similar run-plans. And it was that assuredness which continued into practice for the Italian Grand Prix; Colapinto took his time in ensuring he could get up to speed, finishing 17th in the Friday sessions (ending just two-tenths down on Albon in FP2) and then reaching the heights of ninth in FP3 - one position short of his more experienced team-mate.

Colapinto perhaps fell down slightly in qualifying, as a brush with the gravel on the exit of the second Lesmo consigned him to a Q1 exit. Comparing his first lap to Albon's, he was actually up - fractionally - in the first sector. Only 0.02s separated them before Turns 4 and 5, as Colapinto carried a fraction more speed through Curva Grande.

Colapinto stepped up to the plate on his debut F1 weekend

Photo by: Williams

But Albon gathered more traction out of Lesmo 2 to go 0.145s up - he was faster on the throttle out of the corner to get up to speed earlier on. The elder driver was subsequently earlier on the brakes into Ascari and fractionally later on the gas on the exit, but this ensured he could keep it pinned down the back straight; Colapinto tried to carry more speed through, but had to lift off on the exit. Just over two-tenths separated them after the initial runs.

In comparing Colapinto's opening lap to his second attempt, the traces are very similar in the opening sector - Albon, on his second attempt, was 0.074s up on Colapinto's comparable effort. But the way it was tracking over the following corners, Albon again looked set to preserve a 0.2-0.3s advantage over the lap, enough of a window for the rookie to displace Daniel Ricciardo from the Q2 safe zone. As it happened, Colapinto tried to carry too much speed through Lesmo 2 to instigate his wide moment: he was 6km/h (4mph) up on Albon at the apex and this almost certainly unsettled the rear. Q2, then, was on the cards if Colapinto hadn't veered off-course.

Still, 18th on the grid was a solid result for a debutant - but the race was set to be a very different challenge entirely. Colapinto had only done eight laps consecutively in an F1 car, on Sunday, he was set for 53. Then there was the question of tyre preservation - an unknown for even the most experienced drivers, given the hard-tyre graining that had become apparent. Long-serving Williams race engineer Gaetan Jego, formerly the driver-whisperer of Nicholas Latifi and Sargeant, thankfully had previous in guiding a newcomer through a race stint.

Colapinto tried to carry too much speed through Lesmo 2 to instigate his wide moment: he was 6km/h (4mph) up on Albon at the apex and this almost certainly unsettled the rear.

Told to prioritise tyre warm-up between Turns 1 and 4 on the formation lap, Colapinto took the opportunity to take another practice start and checked up to stay behind Lance Stroll. In trying to compute everything, perhaps he was guilty of letting Stroll get too far off into the distance - something Valtteri Bottas noted over the radio in wondering why the Williams had a massive gap ahead. Jego asked him to close it before reaching the Parabolica, while also stressing the need for power unit cooling and continued tyre warm-up over the remainder of the build lap.

From the start, Colapinto perhaps didn't nail the initial phase and hit the limiter - letting Bottas creep past on his left on the run to the first corner. But he held his line regardless, neatly slotting into the gap behind Tsunoda ahead; his throttle pulses helped to keep momentum through the chicane and kept Bottas at bay on the exit. An attempt on Stroll followed at the Variante della Roggia, Colapinto intending to put a Piastri-like move on the Aston Martin driver - but was unable to find the purchase to come out ahead. That aside, it was a very tentative opening lap, indicative of a driver who simply wanted to avoid all trouble and get to the end of the tour. The throttle was slowly wound on through the Lesmos, and through a dusty Ascari smokescreen.

That said, an opportunity on Stroll presented itself; when Nico Hulkenberg was ushered wide at Ascari by Daniel Ricciardo (the aforementioned cause of the dust), the Haas driver was stuck in anti-stall and lost a hatful of pace on the run to the Parabolica. Thus, Stroll lost momentum in the Parabolica, and Colapinto was far enough behind to take it at normal speed. He got a run, tapped into the slipstream from Hulkenberg ahead, and showed Stroll a clean pair of heels through the chicane - just missing the traction (and track position) to do the same to the Haas. He had a glance down Hulkenberg's inside at the next chicane, but wisely decided discretion was the better part of valour.

"Try to stay in the DRS train and manage these tyres," Jego requested on the third lap. Colapinto duly obliged, although that stint in the pack was hindered when Hulkenberg and Yuki Tsunoda came to blows; their subsequent downfall severed the 21-year-old's link to the rest of the midfield with DRS and left him susceptible to a pass from Stroll on the seventh lap. Regardless, Colapinto was well ahead of the cars behind and managed his medium tyres once settled into the stint.

Colapinto went to battle with Haas' Nico Hulkenberg

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

Listening to the application of throttle, Colapinto was very cautious in his approach in the early stages; presumably in an effort to not overheat the tyres and minimise slip through the corners. That also translated into his general driving, treating the wounded Hulkenberg delicately until the German pitted. This put him two seconds behind the next car - Esteban Ocon - as Hulkenberg was slow, which helped Stroll's path through.

In the following laps, Colapinto is visually starting to attack the circuit more. He was told by Jego to keep managing the "exit slip" on the exit of the two chicanes, having been putting the energy through the tyres in the short-apex corners. In the longer-radius Lesmos, he retains that tentative approach, but the confidence is nonetheless starting to come to him shortly before his stop at the end of lap 16.

Coming in, he's at the limiter speed well before the white line - suggesting that he's not quite comfortable attacking the pitlane entry just yet. His own inputs during the stop are pretty much spot-on; he's in the box at the right position and, despite a small delay in his switch to hards, reacts to the exit light perfectly - albeit with a little bit of a swapper as he plants the throttle to the ground.

As Colapinto leaves the pits, he's told that he's racing for position; Jego tells him to use the 'overtake' button on pit exit to ensure he stays clear of Hulkenberg. He manages this well, barely having to look in his mirrors to ward off the incoming Haas. Two laps later, he gets the undercut on Stroll and has enough pace to pull away from the Aston Martin driver. Later, he's presented with the information to keep managing the slip in the chicanes, as the rear tyres were the "limitation" following an analysis of his first set of tyres. Colapinto's radio traffic seems somewhat one-way, Jego feeding him the info while the newcomer quietly gets on with the task at hand.

Gasly, who has been dropping back, now comes into DRS range ahead on lap 29. Colapinto gets the draft at the end of the lap and neatly posts his car down the inside of the opening corner on the next lap. A long-stinting Bottas is next up, and Jego delivers the command to "go for him - you have the tyres". "Late overtake," he adds as Colapinto draws alongside into Turn 1 at the start of lap 32, as the Finn defends the right-hand side. He handles this added information neatly, going marginally longer into the corner to swing it into Turn 2's tighter line. He gets the job done, and he's up - and starts putting in the lap times to ensure he can push Stroll out of DRS range. The Canadian eventually retreats for his second stop, as Colapinto keeps the Aston Martin driver in his mirrors for the next few tours.

The cut and thrust of the race was exquisitely managed, partly thanks to Jego's composed advice throughout. But Colapinto carried out the commands, belying any pre-match nerves with a clinical approach.

That's impressive, but the really impressive bit is in Colapinto's tyre management over the stint. He had to spend a lot of it looking after the rears, yet did so with self-assurance and speed; his long-stint overlays versus Albon's stint rather shows the closeness in pace of their time with the hard tyre. There was no time-loss in Colapinto's bid to get to the end - and Vowles' message on the radio as the #43 car took the flag rather underlined the veracity of the afternoon's work. "Franco, that is a fantastic first race. You really didn't put a foot wrong, you're only a few seconds (13.6s) off Alex. You had pace in qualifying, if you keep it clean, you're there and you can fight. I can't wait to see how we build together".

Across the first stint, Colapinto was about 0.8-0.9s slower than Albon on average, although Albon largely enjoyed cleaner air when the top eight broke clear while his new team-mate was largely embroiled in dealing with the lower-midfield pack. Laps five and seven spike due to the Hulkenberg/Tsunoda incident and the Stroll pass, but the hard-tyre running was hugely impressive.

Here's the headline numbers: Albon's average time on his hard-tyre stint stood at 1m24.795s, while Colapinto's was 1m24.875s. That's impressively close between them.

The main points of improvement can largely be put down to inexperience; Colapinto does not yet know the limits of the car, and thus had to drive within himself to ensure he did not come into strife early on in the grand prix. But he has been able to lean on his experience of endurance racing for the stint management side, where consistency on a set of tyres is preferable in a race where two diverging strategies have come to the fore.

"He procedurally got everything correct that he needed to. The start he didn't lose position. He got to the pitstop - he did a good job, put the car on the marks" James Vowles

"To finish within a few seconds of Alex, of which the delta was all made in the first stint, when he qualified out of where the position he could achieve was, is a good result," Vowles reflected afterwards. "He procedurally got everything correct that he needed to. The start he didn't lose position. He got to the pitstop - he did a good job, put the car on the marks.

"It's a whole different world in how you use all of the tools and systems, and there's still more to come, but it's a very good start to where he needed to be. And he didn't put a foot wrong in the race. There's not a moment where you looked at him and went, he's out of control. Apart from one mistake in qualifying - and for clarity, up to that point, he was about within a tenth of Alex - that's the only mistake that anyone can put on him this weekend.

"Let me just present the challenge that was in front of him today: 'We have front left graining, which doesn't happen that much these days in the sport, so I need you to manage that - and here's how you do that', 'you're going to have rear overheating - here's how you manage that'. That's fairly more common, but not to have both at the same time. 'And here's how you use your tools to try and juggle the balls between those two'. He did all that really well and ended up with a one-stop and without dropping really much time to Alex."

Colapinto impressed team principal Vowles with his opening weekend in F1

Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images

Going back to the projected qualifying delta, assuming it'll be about 0.2s without the Lesmo mistake: this is already in the ballpark of Sargeant's usual deficit to Albon - perhaps even a bit closer, going on the American's delta in the sessions in which both took part. It's impressive for Colapinto to be there already, although there is the caveat that he already knows the Monza circuit.

Baku will be a much sterner test: it's a circuit he'll get a week's worth of simulator practice for, but the walls will loom closer in the real world, and the bumpy Azeri streets will bite if the Argentine does not take care.

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When Colapinto is fully up to speed, he can afford to be more bold in qualifying without surpassing the limit of adhesion, and with the small quirks of a race - attacking the pit limiter, taking a little less margin in the opening lap, and generally working within the framework of the pack. With limited track time, however, it's a great effort to start with. The improvement will start to come when Colapinto finds the limits; it's highly likely that he'll go beyond them on occasion, but that's part of the learning process.

There won't be a seat for him at Williams in 2025 but, if he's able to gather a point or two before the year is out, he'll become a legitimate contender for a drive at the team if Albon or Sainz are tempted away at any point...

Could Colapinto put himself into the frame for a 2026 drive?

Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Motorsport Images