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The Williams team's homegrown solution to its loss of confidence in Logan Sargeant, Franco Colapinto will become the first Argentinian driver to race in Formula 1 in over two decades when he lines up on the grid for the Italian Grand Prix.
The 21-year-old Buenos Aires native has worked his way to the top of the pecking order in Williams's junior ranks and will now get a prime opportunity to stake a longer-term case for an F1 seat - even if the seat he's getting for the rest of 2024 already has a 2025 occupant in grand prix winner Carlos Sainz.
But who is Colapinto, and just how did he end up the first name on Williams's list once it decided to look inwards for its Sargeant replacement?
Colapinto's career
A top karting driver in Argentina and moderately successful on the international scene, Colapinto first dipped his toes in the pool of the FIA's junior formulae ladder in 2018 - taking a win on his first weekend of car racing in Spanish F4 at Spain's Navarra circuit.
He tackled the championship full-time the following year and won it handily, with now sportscar-regular Tijmen van der Helm probably his most notable opposition, then finished an eye-catching third in New Zealand's off-season Toyota Racing Series - among a line-up that also included the likes of Liam Lawson and Yuki Tsunoda (who finished either side of Colapinto in the standings).
A first season at the two-litre Formula Renault level in 2020 (above) yielded another impressive third place in the standings, behind his current Formula 2 rival Victor Martins and Indy NXT frontrunner Caio Collet, but he was only sixth in its 'spiritual successor' Formula Regional European the year after.
At that point, Colapinto was also trying himself in sportscars, but single-seaters became his full focus again in 2022 - as a two-year, four-win stint in the F1-supporting Formula 3 series kicked off.
He had by then spent many of his junior seasons with Dutch squad MP, and was a natural fit for a place in its Formula 2 line-up this year.
The introduction of a new car for 2024 tore up the form book among the series' teams and its established drivers, allowing several rookies - among them Colapinto - to outperform expectations, though notably he has also been a very credible match for his team-mate, third-year F2 driver Dennis Hauger.
These performances put him in line for an FP1 call-up at Williams - mandated by the series' two-rookie-FP1s-a-season rule - and he caught the eye in said call-up, impressing both the team and outside observers with his run at Silverstone in July.
Argentina's F1 record
Juan Manuel Fangio, the defining driver of the world championship's early era, towers over Argentina's F1 legacy, which is also boosted by the likes of Fangio's accomplished contemporary Jose Froilan Gonzalez and perennial 1970s/1980s frontrunner Carlos Reutemann.
But no Argentinian driver has scored points since Reutemann's podium in his penultimate F1 start in 1982, and its more recent F1 imprint is largely summed up by a handful of curious backmarkers at the turn of the century.
Only Jose Maria Lopez and Esteban Guerrieri really came particularly close to bringing an Argentinian presence back onto the F1 grid in the time since.
But as the US F1 project collapsed, Lopez had to contend with 'just' ending up a World Touring Car master and Le Mans 24 Hours and World Endurance Championship champion, while Guerrieri - who didn't get the necessary funding for his 2011 Virgin F1 priority contract - has also been a star on the World Touring Car stage with Honda.
Colapinto, thus, will at Monza become the first driver to fly the blue and white flag on the grand prix grid since Gaston Mazzacane was let go by Prost four races into the 2001 season.
