“Wrong” Alpine strategy cost Franco Colapinto potential F1 points in Canada

Franco Colapinto believes a “wrong” race strategy severely compromised his chances in last weekend’s Canadian Grand Prix.

Alpine Formula 1 driver Colapinto had qualified a strong 10th on his first visit to Canada, putting him in a strong position to break into the points for the first time this season.

At the start of the race, the Franco-Argentine driver lost a place to the Sauber of Nico Hulkenberg, but remained 10th overall after Williams rival Alex Albon ran wide and dropped down the order.

But his race began to unravel when Alpine called him into the pits on lap 12 of 70 for a fresh set of hard tyres. This left him stuck in traffic for much of the race, costing him crucial time to the leaders while also wearing out his tyres excessively.

Having opted to go to the end of the race without another pitstop, it was a frustrating outing for the 22-year-old, who wound up 13th at the finish, a lap down on race winner George Russell (Mercedes).

“We maximised what we’ve done today,” he told F1’s official site. “It just didn’t go our way, strategy-wise.

“It was tricky to know [if] we were doing the wrong thing, but we definitely were doing the wrong stuff.

“At the beginning of the race, stopping early with so many cars starting on [the] hard [tyre], and the team-mates of the guys in front making the race slow for them – it just put us in a really bad position, killing the tyres.

“I had [a] really slow pace after that pit stop with the dirty air and [it was] very tricky to overtake, just power [limited] on the straights and it just made our race very tricky. We went a bit backwards.

“It was tough out there today. Still [there were] some things learned and some things to take, but we need to focus on the next one.”

Canada marked just the fourth race of the year for Colapinto, who was elevated to the race seat at Alpine at Imola after the Enstone-based squad benched its original signing Jack Doohan.

Despite being disappointed by the result, he felt Canada represented his most competitive showing from a personal standpoint.

“It feels like that,” he said.

“It’s just that when you start in the points you want to stay there, and it feels like we didn’t do the right things to try and stay [there], and that’s the only thing.”

Disappointing race from pitlane for Gasly

With Pierre Gasly qualifying 20th and dead last, Alpine elected to make certain changes to his car outside of parc ferme rules, which meant that he had to start the race from the pitlane.

Gasly went long on the first stint on hard tyres, before coming into the pits on lap 53 to switch to medium rubber.

However, lacking the straight line speed to overtake his rivals, he finished a distant 15th.

“We tried with the strategy – to be fair, we tried everything we could,” Gasly admitted. “[We were] just very slow in the straights, so we need to review exactly what we could have done better.

“We had some pace. It’s just been a very frustrating afternoon, being stuck behind cars, and unfortunately we’re just slower than them in the straights and it made it very, very tricky to pass, so we’ll review it.”

Gasly lost further time while battling with Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll on lap 45, with the Frenchman having to take to the escape road at the final chicane.

Stroll was penalised with a 10-second time penalty, but that was of little consolation to Gasly.

“We kind of got side-by-side into the last corner. I feel like he could have done a slightly better job to give me a bit more room – not talking about much, I know we’re both at the limit and we’re talking a few centimetres.

“But unfortunately it put me in the grass – I had to try to cut the chicane and get back on track. I think bigger picture is just [that it was] a bit of a frustrating afternoon, not being able to race.”