Colapinto 9th and 11th in Italy GP practice, admits ‘step back’ | OneFootball

Franco Colapinto finished 9th and 11th in the first two practice sessions for Formula 1’s Italian Grand Prix, ahead of Saturday’s third free practice at 7 a.m. and the qualifying session starting at 11 a.m. —Argentina time—. However, the Argentine Alpine driver was not satisfied with his performance in the second session.

Alpine’s Argentine driver completed 46 laps across the two sessions and set his best time at 1:23.619, recorded in FP2. His teammate Pierre Gasly did not go out on track in the first practice due to the regulation requiring him to give up his seat to rookie Paul Aron, and finished 14th in the second session with a 1:23.773, 0.154 behind the Argentine.

“In FP1 it was very good, but then I had an engine problem. In FP2 we were a bit lost, I think we took a step backward, but we need to understand why: whether it was the temperature or what happened. The car wasn’t working well, it was a bit loose, I had no grip mid-corner, it was understeering, it was moving around more. In general, we didn’t improve at all and I feel we got quite a bit worse,” explained the Buenos Aires native.

And he pointed to what comes next: “On the mediums there was something very quick and with a lot of room to improve. We need to go back to that a little. We have to work for tomorrow.”

The fastest driver on Friday was George Russell, who posted a 1:22.559 lap in the Mercedes during FP2 to beat Leclerc by 0.120 and Antonelli by 0.141. In the first practice session, Ferrari set the pace with Leclerc (1:23.008) and Hamilton (1:23.181) completing a 1-2 in front of the tifosi.

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