If Franco Colapinto takes the big opportunity he has to score his first Formula 1 points for Alpine in the Canadian Grand Prix, he may look back on a moment in the first part of qualifying as a key turning point.
Colapinto will start the Montreal race 10th on the grid after easily his best qualifying performance since replacing Jack Doohan at Alpine. But he did it the hard way, struggling in practice and going into qualifying still chasing four tenths of a second compared to team-mate Pierre Gasly.
One lap performance has been severely lacking so far as Colapinto played catch-up learning the Alpine car, which clearly did not immediately click with his natural driving style.
And that had been evident in Montreal, where Colapinto continued a trend of his early weekends of being a lot slower than Gasly on Friday before chipping away in FP3 - but still needing another big step in qualifying itself.
“I'm still finding my feet in the team and still understanding where I need to go with the set-up,” Colapinto said.
“We've done some pretty good overnight changes. Still a bit of a tricky car to drive so I'm trying to understand how to extract all the potential of it but I think it was a good day, a positive step forward.
“The changes finally gave us a good result and I'm feeling a bit more comfortable. I feel like I can extract a bit more of the grip of the car which is a good direction.”
In Q1, after a good first lap on mediums (teams were chopping and changing between that and the soft compound as it was not clear which was fastest), Colapinto looked like he was hitting trouble in the second runs.
He messed up the first corner and was putting together a lap one second slower than Gasly, who looked set to jump close to the top of the times, as both entered the final sector.
But then Q1 was red-flagged before they finished their laps, which kept Colapinto in a Q2 place before the final runs to remove a bit of pressure. He subsequently nailed his first lap on another new set of softs, whereas Gasly made a mistake and ended up last.
Colapinto had been guilty of constantly taking too much speed into corners, especially Turns 1 and 2, and had to be told several times by his race engineer to manage that. It looked like the message was taking a while to sink in but it did eventually, and with that came a much-needed final qualifying result.
Although Colapinto was disappointed not to do a better job on his second push lap on that final set of softs in Q1, he had done enough to progress. Q2 was not perfect, but it was still decent - 12th, just over a tenth away from making it into the top 10 shootout. Penalties for Isack Hadjar and Yuki Tsunoda meant he still got a 10th-place start.
Colapinto apologised to his team at the end of Q2, just like he did after his mistake late in Q1, but he was assured this was a good result - which might have been better were he on softs, rather than mediums again.
"It's a bit tricky to warm the mediums and it was the first five, six corners until the tyres came in,” he said.
“I lost a bit of laptime, I didn't have the grip on the car and it just felt generally like I could have the pace to go through. I kind of recovered the laptime after, I gained a bit, but I think looking at those first couple of corners and how the tyres were not ready at the start, it would have been a bit of a different story.
“So it’s just a bit bittersweet.”
The upshot was Colapinto looked like the version of himself that impressed so quickly at Williams, and now has the chance of scoring his first points of the season - in the penultimate race of what is ostensibly a five-race evaluation before Alpine reconsiders its driver line-up.
If he turns 10th on the grid into a points finish he could secure his seat with a single result, given it would be more than Doohan achieved in his run of races at the start of the year.
“It's very tricky to compare what the performance should be when you have no testing, when everyone has been testing in Bahrain for I don't know how many days, everyone has had so much running, and you're just getting used to a very tricky car to drive,” said Colapinto.
“It's not an easy car to extract the laptime, it's very quick, but to get that laptime out of the car is not easy. And it definitely took me a bit of time to understand what I had to do with my driving, what I had to change myself, what I need from the car to make me feel a bit more happy.
“It took me a bit longer than what I expected. I think it almost feels now like I'm starting to find what I need, so that's always positive.
“But there is more to come, there is much more to work on the car and more work to do. I guess a decent day, but tomorrow it's the important one.”
