Colapinto a 'sitting duck' in dangerous Bearman crash
Alpine’s Franco Colapinto said he was a “sitting duck” in the incident that led to Ollie Bearman’s 50g Formula 1 crash in the Japanese Grand Prix.
Bearman approached Colapinto seemingly 50km/h faster on the run to Spoon on lap 22 of 53, and had to take avoiding action, swerving to the left and onto the grass on the short straight that leads to that corner. Bearman went into the barriers backwards in a massive crash.
He avoided broken bones in the incident, emerging with bruising on his knee.
“It was really strange to be honest, I was a bit of a sitting duck,” said Colapinto.
“The speed difference is so big and so large. It's almost like you're on an out-lap and another guy is in a pushlap. It's really odd.
"It's a corner that we are doing flat and it's just like more than 50km/h quicker than me.
“I think it gets really sketchy when the straights are not straight and it's turning, because we are not on a straight line, we are kind of turning.
“And once I looked in the mirror, he was spinning in the grass.
“But even spinning, he overtook me, so imagine the speed difference.
“At some point it becomes really dangerous. I'm glad he is OK.”
Colapinto did look to be further over to the left on the track than in previous laps, but defended his position by saying it was normal car placement and that he hadn't been reacting to Bearman closing in.
“I never moved or anything like that,” Colapinto added.
“So I think the speed difference is [down to] many things, but the biggest one is that one car is doing 50km/h more or less than the other one and that's when it becomes dangerous.”
Colapinto, who finished 16th in the race and said he was impacted negatively by the safety car caused by the Bearman incident, has called for a review of the closing speeds in the new 2026 F1 cars and reckons the overtaking the new rules create is “artificial”.
“It's things that are happening with these cars, we just need to somehow make it a bit less of a problem because I think for overtaking it's the same, those overtakes are really artificial as soon as you see on TV," he said of the blow-by overtaking manoeuvres seen so far this year.
“The guy in front, suddenly a car comes by 50km/h quicker and it's like you don't even see it sometimes. So I think just things to review in the future.”
Speaking before having seen Bearman’s onboard, Colapinto said deployment changes “quite a bit” on the run to Spoon corner but said he didn’t use boost there, but believed Bearman was using it as he reckoned the Haas was 45km/h quicker through there than on his previous lap.
