2024-09-15 03:01:00
Argentine driver Franco Colapinto had a great qualifying session and will start ninth in the Formula 1 Azerbaijan Grand Prix, after even beating his teammate, the Thai Alex Albon. In this way, the driver from Buenos Aires appears with a good chance of getting his Williams into the points zone in the race that will start at 8:00 a.m.
Colapinto had started qualifying on one of the most difficult circuits on the calendar with an eighth position in Q1, while in Q2 he set a great time on the last lap that took him to sixth place and allowed him to enter Q3.
In the last qualifying session, Colapinto finished ninth thanks to the time of 1m42s530 he recorded on his last lap, which gave him the chance to get ahead of Albon, who finished tenth.
“We are in a good position to score points,” the Argentine enthused in his statements to the press. Beyond his good result, Colapinto was self-critical, without losing his spontaneity and good humour: “I controlled the tyres like shit, quite badly.” In this sense he recalled what happened in the Italian Grand Prix. “In Monza I controlled them well. This weekend is complicated, there are many slow traction corners and that is where the tyres hurt a lot, braking with the microswitches blocked, with acceleration when we skid, we overheat the tyres. But, step by step I think we will continue to progress,” he analysed.
Colapinto’s weekend started off very complicated, as in free practice 1 on Friday he had to retire due to a heavy crash he suffered when he entered one of the corners too late. But from then on he improved his times more and more, to show that he is ready to fight for points. In the last free practice, prior to qualifying, the Argentinean had finished ninth just 724 thousandths of a second behind the leader George Russell. This great performance also allowed Colapinto to become the first Argentinean to finish in the top ten since Carlos Reutemann did so in the 1982 Brazilian GP.
Pole position went to Ferrari’s Monegasque Charles Leclerc, who will start in first position for the fourth consecutive year on the Baku street circuit. Leclerc is coming off a victory in the Italian Grand Prix and is looking for a win that will allow him to close the gap in the championship with respect to the leader, the Dutchman Max Verstappen. The big news of the weekend was the poor qualifying of the British Lando Norris, second in the championship, who will start this Sunday in seventeenth position.
With this excellent classification, Colapinto will have a serious chance of scoring points in his second race in Formula 1. His debut was two weekends ago, with a remarkable twelfth place in the Italian GP, which was run on the historic Monza circuit.