Alpine to consider what action to take after Colapinto crash

Alpine will "consider what course of action should be taken" against its driver Franco Colapinto for the "very poor move" that caused a multi-car crash in Formula 1's Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

World champion Lando Norris said Colapinto deserved a race ban after the Alpine driver locked up into the first corner at a restart following a safety car period, and wiped out himself, team-mate Pierre Gasly and Norris too.

Colapinto described it as a "big mistake" and said he was "out of control" after locking up as soon as he jumped on the brakes.

F1's timing system reported a 10-second penalty for Colapinto after the race had finished for causing a collision, which gets converted into a grid drop for the next race instead as he did not finish.

The stewards has announced that this will be a five-place drop.

Alpine executive advisor Flavio Briatore said: "I want to take time to reflect on it and consider what course of action should be taken, so we can learn from it and avoid such a situation in future."

Briatore said Alpine apologises to Norris and McLaren "for ruining their race", which Colapinto had already done himself too.

"I know that Franco has taken full responsibility for it, as he should; in fact he braked far too late considering the context of the race and the safety car restart," said Briatore.

"It was a very poor move for a driver of his experience."

It is not clear what action Alpine would be willing to take against Colapinto, like benching him for a race itself, or whether it would limit it simply to a warning internally.

However, Briatore is understood to be very unhappy with the error, given the impact it has on Alpine's championship fight.

Colapinto and Gasly were on course for a double-points finish for Alpine in the race, at least ninth and 10th, which would have cut the gap to Racing Bulls to just six points in the constructors' championship.

Instead the incident allowed Racing Bulls to land an unexpected points haul as the chaos cleared a path for Arvid Lindblad - who drove into his own team-mate Liam Lawson at the same restart but avoided a penalty - to finish seventh.

This means Alpine now trails Racing Bulls by 15 points in the fight for fifth.

"Obviously I'm extremely disappointed with the outcome of today's race, knowing we lost valuable points in the championship fight," said Briatore.

"These sort of incidents shouldn't happen, particularly when we were running well with both cars in point-scoring positions.

"I feel very sorry for the team and for Pierre who did a great job all weekend."

Norris stands alone in believing a full-on suspension is merited.

He was a passenger after locking up and other drivers had sympathy for this, with the top-three finishers - George Russell, Max Verstappen and Isack Hadjar - all agreeing a ban would be too harsh.

"It was a small error that had a big consequence," said Russell. "I think, personally, race bans should come from drivers intentionally doing something very dangerous and very reckless.

"So I think it was unfortunate."

Hadjar actually said the track is "not good enough" because it is bumpy off-line and hard to generate tyre temperature behind the safety car.

Wiping out two cars, and the call for a ban, conjures images of the 2012 Belgian GP start shunt caused by Romain Grosjean, which he got a one-race ban for.

But there are two key differences in Colapinto’s crash – it involved a smaller number of cars, and Grosjean's ban was the trigger for a formal licence penalty point system that now tots up driving offences over a 12-month period.

So, there is a structure in place to punish repeat offenders of dangerous or deliberate acts. Which is why unilaterally banning Colapinto would be heavy-handed at best as the system will take care of that if he proves a repeat offender and it is applied correctly.

Facing the wrath of a stern operator like Briatore, mourning the loss of an important result in the team's championship fight, is an unenviable punishment in itself. But it could certainly be argued that this sort of crash might have merited a rare application of licence penalty points in addition to a five-place grid penalty.