Alpine director Steve Nielsen says the squad will “review” why Franco Colapinto ignored a call not to overtake team-mate Pierre Gasly towards the end of Formula 1’s United States Grand Prix.
In Austin Gasly and Colapinto ended up squabbling over 17th after another character-building afternoon for the Enstone team, which has long shifted focus on next season.
Gasly’s pace dropped off after he had made his only pitstop on lap 27, much earlier than planned to protect against an undercut, leaving him with a long final stint on soft tyres to the end of the 56-lap race.
Colapinto had pitted five laps later, so on fresher tyres the Argentinian was quicker than Gasly and was keen to pass his team-mate, to prevent being passed himself by Sauber’s Gabriel Bortoleto.
But with both cars saving fuel and set to be lapped, Alpine decided to freeze the positions, to which Colapinto responded: “Wait what?! Hold positions?! But he’s slow.”
Colapinto promptly ignored the call and passed Gasly into Turn 1 on the penultimate lap, with a decisive move that just about left Gasly enough space on exit not to go fully off the track.
Photo by: Sam Bloxham / LAT Images via Getty Images
“At the end, I had slightly fresher tyres than Pierre and saw Gabriel [Bortoleto] attacking. I wanted to keep him behind both of us,” Colapinto said after finishing 17th, while Bortoleto did end up passing Gasly.
Colapinto’s Alpine bosses didn’t quite see it the same way, with managing director Steve Nielsen expressing his disappointment in the team’s own press release.
“On Pierre’s side, we covered an undercut threat to box onto softs, a little earlier than we wanted, and then had a slow pitstop, which we will review and rectify,” Nielsen explained. “Franco was able to extend his medium run to have a tyre delta towards the end of the race where he caught up to Pierre.
“We gave the instruction for the drivers to maintain position as we were managing fuel with both cars and the added variable of the number of laps remaining with the leaders in close proximity.
“As a team, any instruction made by the pitwall is final and today we are disappointed that this didn’t happen so it’s something we will review and deal with internally.”
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– The Autosport.com Team
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