Franco Colapinto's first day on-track as an Alpine Formula 1 driver featured him trying to fend off both McLarens, George Russell, and a confused Max Verstappen in Imola practice.
While Alpine team-mate Pierre Gasly was a surprise frontrunner on pure pace in Friday practice, ending FP2 third-fastest, Colapinto's status as an interloper among the big teams came in an unusual form.
He found himself at the head of an unenviable train of cars trying to hold off Lando Norris, Oscar Piastri, Russell and Verstappen in quick succession in the final third of FP2 when everybody was conducting high-fuel work and trying to keep track position.
Colapinto was left glancing in his mirrors on different straights on several occasions, using the DRS at times, and even half-defending into some corners - like when he briefly rebuffed an attack from Norris into the second Villeneuve chicane and Tosa hairpin.
Norris got through just after, and Piastri breezed by more easily on the main straight after Colapinto went deep at Rivazza just after being told to hold his track position if he could.
Then Verstappen found it tougher going and was notably puzzled by Colapinto's tactics, radioing: "What's this guy doing, man? He's using DRS."
That had been the plan against Piastri too, and the DRS popped open again on the Alpine as Russell got onto Colapinto's tail - which was effective enough that Russell actually opted to back off to make a gap of his own.
Even that looked like it wouldn't give Colapinto a total reprieve as next in the queue was Charles Leclerc, who quickly moved into range before the session was red flagged for Isack Hadar's stuck Racing Bulls.
While it is unusual to see drivers get so defensive over track position in practice it is hardly unprecedented, especially on short tracks with few overtaking opportunities and limited time to get crucial long-run data logged.
Colapinto did nothing wrong or out of the ordinary in how he handled it, either. He was just pushing a little harder, refusing to yield and - as Verstappen pointed out - using the DRS in the DRS zone leading to Tamburello to try to protect himself where he was most vulnerable.
Plus it is important to recognise that this was not done unilaterally by Colapinto. It was a firm instruction from his race engineer - repeated instructions, in fact, to try to hold position and specifically to use the DRS to help that.
Colapinto's long run had started quite encouragingly, lapping around a similar pace to Gasly, but it was set back when he encountered traffic himself in the form of Alex Albon's Williams and backed off by around 3.5 seconds to get a gap. This dropped him more quickly into the clutches of the first McLaren and set in motion all that followed.
While there was probably some value in this from a racecraft perspective and pushing around the lap in different places to keep the faster cars behind, pace-wise it wrecked the long run. Five good laps at the start of the stint gave way to five compromised ones with only a couple relevant in between all the fighting and being overtaken.
That is not criticism of Colapinto though, just a reflection of an unfortunate set of circumstances that meant an otherwise encouraging day in the car unravelled a bit at the very end.
Colapinto's headline pace was not stunning as he ended up almost half a second slower than Gasly but that looked like it was owed to an untidy middle sector, which is where the bulk of his deficit had been to his team-mate all day.
Overall, Colapinto chipped away at the gap, and should bring it down further on Saturday.
If he can, he is unlikely to find himself irritating the frontrunners - either by being in the way, or like Gasly on sheer pace - but he could set himself up for a point-scoring Alpine debut.
Edd Straw's trackside verdict
Colapinto’s start as an Alpine F1 race driver was a quiet one, steadily settling into the car.
Watching from Acque Minerali, he felt his way in with a far more conservative approach early in the session – a gear down on his team-mate Gasly in the second part of the double right-hander, which is usually taken in fourth.
But after what was best described as an unobtrusive FP1, which is exactly what he needed, in which his performance run was compromised by aborting his first lap after an error, he built up his pace to the point where he was actually a little more attacking than Gasly on his quickest lap in FP2. That was a positive sign, even if it delayed getting onto the power thanks to him having the car rotated a little later.
It shows he started to lean on the car properly, but not excessively, and can start chipping away at the detail that will make up the gap between him and his team-mate.
