Colapinto 10th in Baku qualifying, ‘the car felt wrong, lots to do’ | OneFootball

Franco Colapinto, Alpine’s Argentine driver, made it clear that he is not relaxing despite having qualified tenth for the Azerbaijan GP on the Baku street circuit.

The Pilar native said that his strong lap to make it into Q3 “was good” and “very difficult without the slipstream.” He also mentioned that he lost “four or five tenths on the straight.” “I lost a lot earlier at Turn 15, where I had an issue with the battery. After that, lap 15 was very inconsistent the whole time with that super clip I had, which was making the car stop. I was losing quite a bit of time,” he explained.

“The Q2 lap was very good. I went through the castle section very quickly, I tried to take more risks to get through and secure a place in Q3. It was enough. Then Q3 was not good. It’s not that I didn’t do a good lap, but I just didn’t put everything together. The car didn’t feel good again. It was a bit inconsistent, with that super clip, the battery, and the braking,” he said in an interview with ESPN.

Colapinto admitted that he has “been struggling this weekend” and that he has not been able to “brake hard without locking up.” He added: “I’m overheating the tires a lot under braking. Then that affects me through the whole corner. It was an issue we couldn’t solve. There’s still a lot of work to do. Hopefully I can have a good race. We have to keep working, move forward at the start, and then put together a good race to score points.” He also joked about the strong vibrations he felt: “I need to go to the dentist.”

The big challenge will be the main race, which will not be held on Sunday but this Saturday instead (it was moved to daytime because of a local holiday). “We’re going to try to move forward and use a different strategy,” Colapinto said, hopeful of another strong showing in F1.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇪🇸 here.