Alpine driver Franco Colapinto endured an utterly miserable F1 Las Vegas GP. The Argentine battled a severe lack of pace from the start. Critical damage sustained in a Turn 1 incident completely derailed his performance. He finished P15 after the McLarens got disqualified.
The former Williams driver painted a vivid picture of a long and painful Saturday night in a frank post-race debrief in the print media pen.
The difficulties began almost immediately for Colapinto at the Las Vegas GP with the Alpine’s strategic call to start on the hard compound tyre. This gamble immediately yielded poor results for the driver. He struggled to find any competitive rhythm throughout the 50 laps of the race.
Colapinto was brutally honest about his feeling on track.
“I didn’t have any grip the whole race and I just felt pretty slow in general. Very far off the pace.”
The lack of traction turned the opening phase of the race into a struggle. This initial deficit was swiftly and catastrophically compounded by the opening lap incident.
Turn one and the critical damage for Colapinto at Las Vegas GP
The pivotal moment, which transformed a slow struggle into an unmanageable battle for survival, came at Turn 1. As a result of being caught in the midfield chaos, Colapinto admitted to being unsure of the sequence of events. It turned out he was tagged by Alex Albon after Bortoleto came steaming down the inside out of control.
“I don’t even know, they hit me from behind and I just saw Gabi [Gabriel Bortoleto] spinning on the inside.” he stated.
However, he quickly pieced together the chain reaction that inflicted the irreparable harm on his Alpine machine. “Someone hit me, I think Alex [Albon] got hit, he hit me and then my diffuser was completely broken,” he recounted.
The loss of the diffuser is a fatal blow to any modern open-wheel car. It is responsible for generating a huge percentage of the rear aerodynamic grip and stability.
Battling a fundamentally broken car
In effect of battling a car that had lost its fundamental aerodynamic balance, Colapinto described the remainder of the Las Vegas GP as a “very long race.” This structural damange meant he had “no rear support,” which directly translates into uncontrolled instability across the entire F1 street circuit.
Colapinto elaborated on the technical consequence of the broken diffuser: “It just cost me a lot of rear downforce and I was sliding the whole race a lot… just oversteering all over the place.”
This condition transforms driving from a precise act of balancing grip into a constant exercise in catching the rear end. This is particularly difficult in the high-speed corners. The experience was physically and mentally draining. It left Colapinto in no doubt as to the severity of his performance deficit.
Reflecting on the brutal conditions he was forced to endure, Colapinto’s summary was crystal clear. He highlighted the complete absence of any positive aspects to take away from the night.
“It didn’t feel nice. It was not a nice race, definitely didn’t enjoy it much,” he said. The combination of a poor initial strategy and race-ending damage from a midfield tangle ensured that the Alpine rookie’s efforts were ultimately limited to a little more than damage limitation.
