Franco Colapinto, Williams, Monza, 2024

Colapinto did “good job” in race, “fantastic” in qualifying – Vowles

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In the round-up: Williams team principal James Vowles praised Franco Colapinto’s performance in his Formula 1 debut.

In brief

Vowles praises Colapinto

Colapinto qualified 18th for his Formula 1 debut, took the chequered flag in 13th and was promoted one place by Daniel Ricciardo’s penalty. Vowles declared himself pleased with the newcomer’s performance.

“Franco, this weekend, given we’ve really taken him out of F2 and immediately put him in F1 – but with significant amounts of preparation behind the scenes – has done a good job,” said Vowles in a video released by the team.

As well as the front-left tyre graining problems most drivers suffered the Williams pair also had to cope with their rear tyres overheating, said Vowles. Colapinto “took it in his stride,” he said.

“He executed the race perfectly, making progress and overtaking cars. And I think had qualifying really gone to plan – and just for transparency in qualifying he was near enough within a tenth of Alex [Albon] as he went through turn seven, so very, very close – he would have been today potentially in with a chance for points. And that, for your first outing in a car, is fantastic.”

McLaughlin “couldn’t see” in Milwaukee glare

Scott McLaughlin said he had difficulty seeing into two corners at the Milwaukee Mile as the sun set during last weekend’s opening race. However the Penske driver, who won the second race, said he enjoyed the event.

“I know I won, but I like this race,” said McLaughlin. “Yesterday was extremely hard. I don’t know what other drivers thought or said, whatever. I could not see into three and four. The glare from the sun was incredible, especially when the windscreen got dirty and stuff. That was a big issue for me.

“It probably made the race-ability of the track tougher down three, four compared to today because it was so hard to pick the right line. No one wanted to make a wrong move.

“I prefer this [earlier] start time. I thought we had a pretty good crowd. Unless they put some lights on, [then] it would be pretty sick. It would be awesome.”

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Comment of the day

@Bullfrog was dismayed by the standard of driving from some in last weekend’s World Endurance Championship race:

Not enough ‘hyper-drivers’ around for all these cars – several are driving them as if they’re in F3. You can’t win a six-hour race on the first lap!

It used to be the experienced, patient forty-something drivers in sportscars while the young ‘uns charged around (flat-out, on race-able tyres) in F1. Now it’s the other way ’round…
@Bullfrog

Happy birthday!

Happy birthday to Tim C!

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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23 comments on “Colapinto did “good job” in race, “fantastic” in qualifying – Vowles”

  1. I think he did a great job, not just “good”. He was racing in F3 only last year. He was thrown into the sea but felt comfortable with that from the beginning. He was tasked to pit only once having not even completed a 8 laps stint and he made it work.

    1. Agreed – he did a thoroughly good job. I didn’t see or hear of any mistakes during the race, and he made up places through the event.

      Gotta be happy with that as a debut.

  2. Yeah, I honestly wouldn’t put too much stock into Colapinto’s admittedly great race last Sunday.

    De Vries too, shined in Monza a couple years back, and Ricciardo’s very unlikely win also came at the same track.

    I’m not sure why, but this particular track seems to have a tendency to provoke this kind of “once in a blue moon” performances.

    I’d love to see him try to make the best of his limited time though. The only Argentinian I’ve only ever seen in F1 is that one guy who drove for Minardi that one time.

    1. Gaston Mazzacane? He had a season for Minardi and a few the following year for Prost, and is as far as I remember the last Argentinian to race in F1 before Colapinto. Esteban Tuero also raced for Minardi a season or so before.

      1. Esteban Tuero also raced for Minardi a season or so before

        Weirdly, when I did a look up for Tuero (didn’t recall) the name before that I did recall: Fontana.
        I say weirdly as Tuero has 16 starts and Fontana only 4 – what did Fontana do that made him memorable?

        1. He held up Jacques Villeneuve during the 1997 title decider. Fontana was driving for Sauber (a Ferrari customer at the time) and it was heavily rumoured that he had been instructed to make life difficult for Villeneuve while allowing Schumacher to lap him easily.

          1. Fontana himself said that he was ordered to block Villeneuve, which both teams deny.

          2. @hunocsi Not sure why Ferrari felt the need to deny that, when Williams and McLaren had an open agreement that they would help each other in the final race if it came to that.

        2. He beat a bunch of stars including Ralf Schumacher and JarnoTrulli to the German F3 title before a massive shunt at Macau. That probably stopped his momentum, he was looking great before that.

      2. @red-andy – Maccazena is indeed the last before Colapinto.

        Deerhunter – Only Colapinto for me.

        1. There’s a lot of mistakes in the way you wrote mazzacane, hope that’s autocorrect related.

    2. I’d love to see him try to make the best of his limited time though. The only Argentinian I’ve only ever seen in F1 is that one guy who drove for Minardi that one time.

      I’m assuming that was not any kind of dismissal of Argentinian drivers, and just that you hadn’t actually seen them in action. Most people will just go “Fangio” and say no more, but there were others. The one you recall is Mazzacane.

      Reutemann was my teen years (and a bit) and Fangio stopped driving before I could have seen him in action.

      1. Indeed, curiously some countries had really strong drivers back in the 50s and then no more, at least this goes for argentina and italy, no one was anywhere near fangio’s and ascari’s level after that.

    3. Franco’s very calm and collected. I’d not be surprised if he followed this race with equally strong performances

  3. I think looking at the whole quote Vowles wasn’t saying that Colapinto’s qualifying was fantastic (he did make a mistake after all), but his weekend performance overall.

  4. Im impressed, well behaved on track and not that for off Albons pace, hard to tell whether he could develop to be fast enough, but it was a great start at least.

  5. He indeed had a good clean race & weekend overall apart from the second Lesmo error & he also did some decent overtaking, ultimately finishing six positions higher than where he started (via Ricciardo’s ten-second time penalty), so not bad for a GP debutant, especially with limited preparation time.
    However, as pointed out above, Monza as a single circuit can be misleading.
    Therefore, the upcoming rounds will better demonstrate his potential over this nine-round stint.

    1. Monza is a track the same às any track, with 20 of the worlds best drivers on the grid.. I don’t understand why you people think a good performance there is misleading… If it were an easy track, the best stillcome out on top. It was a very credible performance by a rookie thrown into the deap end. Like Keith wrote, he finished much closer to Albon than Sargeant did last year at the same track with much less F1 experience. This forum has been inundated with sad doubters.

      1. It’s because there are other tracks that are a different shape and they’re harder to drive. Just ask Oscar about Zandvoort.

      2. It’s just that it happened quite a few times over the years, I hope you wouldn’t call ricciardo’s 2021 season good, but he was excellent at monza and won on merit, was looking like he would win even before hamilton and verstappen crashed, and ofc you have de vries, it would be interesting if someone could make another recent example of 1-off performances in other tracks.

        Monza in particular is the temple of speed, there’s not many corners.

  6. Nobody let Buemi on the dodgems at a funfair if there’s kids around. There will be tears and witness statements everywhere.

  7. Toyota is really not having a great time, are they? It was all fun and games when they were the only serious team, but now? Repeated complaints from the suits about BoP, Buemi doing a poor man’s Schumacher impression without having the skill to do it properly and thereby straight up breaking one of the most fundamental rules in all of FIA racing (don’t crowd others off), and Conway not caring about yellows for a stranded car and even falsely claiming it doesn’t matter in a straight line. Sounds like Magnussen isn’t the only driver in need of a time-out to reflect on their recent choices.

  8. I’m guessing the drivers and their families involved with the Williams Driver Academy will be greatly encouraged by Franco’s promotion to F1.

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