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Franco Colapinto’s run of crashes has come at a cost. He is carrying a performance deficit at a pivotal moment in his fledgling Formula 1 career.
The Williams driver's car is in a different specification to team-mate Alex Albon, and it seems to be showing in Qatar. Colapinto, only 19th in practice, was slowest of all in the first part of sprint qualifying – half a second off the next car and almost a second slower than Albon, who ended up 12th.
“We didn't really find anywhere really to go,” Colapinto lamented.
“I was losing little-by-little through the lap, I was losing almost in every corner, which is always the most frustrating part because there's no big chunks of laptime in one place.
“In the high speed I was OK, but then I was coming to the mid-speed and the slower corners, I was really struggling for the front washing out mid-corner, and I was really struggling for balance.”
Colapinto’s car has older front suspension – this was updated in Singapore to complement other aerodynamic changes – and some older aerodynamic components as well.
It is not an optimised FW46, and it might even be a little heavier due to a combination of repairs and non-carbonfibre parts. He's also learning a new track on a sprint weekend, which has compressed the time available to get up to speed.
It is unfortunate timing given Colapinto’s Williams cameo is almost over ahead of Carlos Sainz’s arrival next year, and the young Argentine is trying to convince Red Bull to put him in a race seat full-time next season.
But it is a problem that is largely self-inflicted.
He is far from the only contributor to Williams’s extraordinary damage bill this season. His predecessor Logan Sargeant had some large crashes and Albon has had multiple incidents as well, most recently a consequence of misfortune – Albon was squeezed at the start in Mexico, and had what was thought to be a failure of some kind causing his crash in the wet in Brazil.
Williams tried gamely to manage it, and even rebuilt both cars to the latest spec for Las Vegas despite having three major crashes in Brazil (two of which were suffered by Colapinto) – only for Colapinto to crash extremely heavily in qualifying in the US.
Full repairs or replacements are no longer possible and Colapinto, being the one to have sustained the most recent damage, now counts a tangible cost. At least for this weekend, as Williams hopes that both cars could be back on the preferred spec in Abu Dhabi.
That leaves Colapinto on the back foot, as while he thinks there will be opportunities to improve this weekend, “we're still in a bit of a difficult position with the car and with the parts we have, there are things to work on but [it’s] not super promising at the moment”.
That could have an impact on Colapinto’s bid to settle his future.
Red Bull had noted how well he had adapted to F1 following his surprise call-up to replace Sargeant in the week between the Dutch and Italian GPs after the summer break. But as Red Bull boss Christian Horner told The Race: “He got off to a great start, and his first three races were truly impressive. And the second three have been truly forgetful.”
And Horner will be one of the people making the key decisions that decide if a seat opens up at Red Bull or its sister team RB, likely being triggered by if Red Bull keeps Sergio Perez or not.
A clash with RB's Liam Lawson in Mexico, the Brazil qualifying crash and shunt behind the safety car, and the massive wall strike in Vegas qualifying, are the obvious setbacks.
But Colapinto has, after a bright start, looked a little further off Albon of late – trailing two or three tenths, which is a gap more like would have been expected when Colapinto stepped in. It seems to have ‘normalised’ since Albon got more comfortable in the car again, but it has been disguised by Albon’s bizarre run of non-finishes for various reasons.
This has not completely diminished Colapinto’s good initial impression. But it has left him needing to finish on a high to avoid the reputation setting in that he is too erratic.
Williams boss James Vowles offers some mitigation. He points to Colapinto’s inexperience in the wet, not just in F1 but in F2, as something of a mitigating factor for his Brazil double whammy. And for Vegas, Vowles says Williams must take some blame for leaving Colapinto to start that crucial final lap in Q2 in close proximity of Pierre Gasly’s Alpine.
“He needs to pull it together as a package,” Vowles told The Race. “But I think it's also fair to say that it's unlikely you're going to get a complete, developed driver five races in.”
Vowles is pleased that Colapinto has tended to race well when he has qualified a little worse. He did so in Mexico (until the Lawson incident) and in Vegas. And while a comeback drive is going to be tricky in the Qatar sprint race, salvaging something from a weekend that has started poorly is still possible.
It is important he shows something, because Colapinto was always light on time to make his case for a 2025 race seat somewhere else. And with two races left, that time is quickly running out.
“He's obviously got talent,” said Horner. “But the pressure in this business is very tough.”
