Williams team boss James Boles was full of praise for the Argentine rookie Franco Colapinto, who competed in just his second race for the team, after the 2018 champion recovered from a fall in Friday practice to secure his first career top-10 finish.
Colapinto, who had never raced in Baku before, had a rough start to the weekend after crashing the barrier at Turn 4 in FP1. He lost about half of the hour-long session, costing the team a lunch break, and was left to continue repairs until the first 15 minutes of FP2. The 21-year-old tried crashing the car again in the castle area late on Friday afternoon, but managed to continue unscathed.
Despite a lack of track time and inexperience on Baku’s quirky street circuit, Colapinto turned suffering into pleasure with a perfectly judged qualifying time, finishing ninth on the grid. He also became the first teammate to beat Alex Albon in a Grand Prix since Nicolas Latifi at the 2022 British Grand Prix.
Boles, who abruptly decided to fire Logan Sargent midway through a Netherlands-Italy doubleheader late last month, said the Argentine had already justified his decision.
“I hope the world sees what we’re seeing now and sees why he deserves to be there,” he told SiriusXM. “He made me proud. He really did. The second race weekend, he made a mistake on a track he’s never been on before.
“When I told him about it, I said, ‘You’re going to make mistakes. They’re going to happen, and I’d rather you make them sooner rather than later,’ because you learn from everything that builds up to it.
“But after that mistake, he did what we asked of him more than anything else. He went smoothly back into FP3, and qualifying is qualifying. That’s where you shine, and he was outstanding.
“There was a little bit of a mistake and he will be very disappointed with himself. There was a mistake of about 0.3 seconds in the castle section and that would have put him in a strong position for tomorrow. But regardless, we have two races in his F1 career and he is fighting against a very strong Alex. It is a good compliment.”
Albon had a chance of breaking Colapinto’s time in Round 3, but the team sent him out onto the track with a cooling fan still plugged into the roll hoop air intake, preventing him from completing the outlap in time to start the final flyer.
Um… this is something new 😅
Alex Albon had a very notable start to the third quarter!#F1 #AzerbaijanGP pic.twitter.com/QgCCTVz95y
— Formula 1 (@F1) September 14, 2024
The Thai driver stopped at the pit exit and removed himself, then dumped the fluorescent yellow radiator on the side of the road before rejoining the track, but missed the checkered flag due to the delay. It was a highly unusual mistake for the team, which Vowles explained was due to two protocol errors.
“The reason is that the turnaround is compressed into a very short time, about 40 seconds. It’s shorter than normal,” he explained. “In this particular case, for reasons I have to explain, we installed a permanent fan instead of having a temporary fan because that’s the real solution. You don’t install a permanent one in 40 seconds. It takes five minutes. As a result, one of the checks wasn’t completed and the car was driven off without it.
“We could have caught it then. So we have to go through two mistakes. Why did we put in a permanent one when we should have put in a temporary one? And could we have caught it earlier? Because he would have rapped then too.”
Albon and his team were summoned to the post-meeting management for questioning regarding the unsafe release.
With Colapinto and Albon starting ninth and 10th respectively, second only to Fernando Alonso among other midfielders, Bols is optimistic a point will come on Sunday.
“Friday’s long run was competitive against Aston Martin,” he said. “We should at least be in a position to fight them.
“You always have to have one eye on the back of you because, frankly, that’s the midfield these days. Even if you’re ahead, it separates us all by milliseconds. The real focus is on the two cars finishing on points. That’s what we’re leaving behind.”
