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Franco Colapinto left the Italian Grand Prix with ninth place and Alpine points, but the result offered little consolation after a genuine podium opportunity disappeared in an instant.
Starting seventh, the Alpine driver gained a position when an incident involving Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton sent Hamilton down the order. Leclerc’s crash at the end of the second lap then promoted Colapinto again, before he overtook Oscar Piastri. The race was red-flagged soon afterwards.
Colapinto lined up fourth for the restart and immediately attacked Max Verstappen. He passed the Red Bull driver into the first chicane to move briefly into third, only for Verstappen to reclaim the position on the run to the Variante della Roggia.
The decisive moment came just metres later. Colapinto lost control of the Alpine through Lesmo, ran into the gravel and fell to 16th.
“I had a great opportunity and I didn’t take it, so I’m sad, really sad about that,” Colapinto told ESPN Argentina after the race. “I think it could have been a great race, and that was a big mistake.”
The scale of the recovery was significant, even if it could not repair the missed opportunity. Colapinto said the car suffered a lot of damage and that he initially feared he would have to retire. The team adjusted the car using the available tools, closed everything up and made it slightly more draggy before he resumed and scored points.
His Alpine team-mate Pierre Gasly, who started from pole and finished seventh, underlined how difficult it was to sustain a podium challenge. Gasly’s pole had already been one of the defining stories of the weekend, as covered in our report on his maiden Formula 1 pole at Monza.
That result did little to reduce Colapinto’s disappointment. He said Alpine should have scored more points and apologised to the team, adding that he hoped to perform better in Madrid.
The Argentine also played down the significance of his pass on Verstappen, saying that, from inside the car, it made little difference who was alongside him. Yet the battle was a clear reminder of what had been within reach.
“To be fighting side-by-side with the top cars and the top teams, we cannot really do it,” Colapinto said. “And so to just miss an opportunity like this, it’s very painful.”
He’s a software engineer with a deep passion for Formula 1 and motorsport. He co-founded Formula Live Pulse to make live telemetry and race insights accessible, visual, and easy to follow.