This morning he ran the sprint race at the Qatar GP y Franco Colapinto was the protagonist of a fantastic maneuver at the start, which allowed him to get ahead of Sergio Perez when they started from the pit lane. The start of the Mexican and the Argentine from the pits was due to a sanction from the FIA for having changed the suspensions of their respective cars before the race when the park was closed. Williams’ runner took advantage of the carelessness of Czech and climbed one place in the rankings, although he later finished 18th as he also surpassed Guanyu Zhou.
“You can see that Checo wasn’t looking at the traffic light or something. Maybe he was trying to get into first gear, the first one takes a little while, you see? I was already ready to leave, my tires were hot, he stayed there waiting a few minutes before. “I had more grip and at least we recovered a little there”mentioned before the microphones, once the sprint race in Lusail was over, a Colapinto who smiled during his comment. And he completed: “Checo fell asleep, he fell asleep.” Later, he focused on the qualy that will take place starting at 3:00 p.m. (Argentine time) today: “Now we have to think about the classification in a while, then we will think about tomorrow’s race.”
Who also spoke after the sprint in the Lusail International Circuit it was his own Sergio Perezwho sounded annoyed when asked about the failed start: “I wanted to open a gap to go with clean air for as long as possible and we stayed there for almost five minutes, there was no temperature in the tires at all. It was important today to go in clear air to find the car and see where we are. We have changed a lot, in the end we have this disconnection from the balance that is costing us a lot. I don’t think we have improved, on the contrary, we have to make some changes for the rest of the weekend.”
Czech Pérez elaborated: “When I left I was slow, Franco was behind, my tires were very cold because I was at the traffic light for almost five minutes and the important thing for us today was to find balance in clean air for as long as possible. We tried different ailerons too. There is still a lot to improve.” Meanwhile, the Mexican He also referred to the persistence of some problems: “We have this disconnection that we want a lot of stability at entry, but then in a fast corner we don’t have any front axle. On one of the busiest circuits of the year, we are about to remove the front wing from everything we have removed from the wing, so there is something we cannot find and we have a big disconnection.”
During the eighth round of the total of 19, Colapinto took advantage of the starting straight to overtake the Chinese Guanyu Zhou (Kick Sauber) and took 18th placebehind the Frenchman Esteban Ocon (Alpine). The Argentine maintained a good race pace after Friday’s problems, on the verge of running the entire race in the DRS zone with the RBs of Yuki Tsunoda (17th) and Liam Lawson (16th). His Williams teammate Alex Albon came 15th.
Due to a violation of the regulations, the Argentine had to start from the pit area like Pérez. FIA technical delegate Jo Bauer was the one who informed the stewards to consider the situation: “Changes have been made to the suspension settings on cars numbers 11 and 43. Therefore, these should now be required to cars that start the sprint from the pit lane in accordance with article 40.9 b) of the 2024 Formula One sporting regulations.
Franco had hinted that his car had problems with the suspension after yesterday’s qualifying, in which he had finished in twentieth place: “Obviously the old suspension, all the old parts I have on the car, don’t help at all. A little complicated so far this weekend. We have to work to try to understand what to do for tomorrow, but definitely complicated for now”.
THE SUMMARY OF THE SPRINT RACE AT THE QATAR GP
