Williams team principal James Vowles was effusive in his praised for the team’s second-race rookie Franco Colapinto after the Argentine recovered from a Friday practice crash to earn the first top-10 qualifying berth of his career.
Colapinto, who has never raced in Baku before, got his weekend off to a rough start when he clouted the barriers at Turn 4 during FP1. It cost him around half of the hour-long session and the team its lunch break, with repairs lasting all the way into he first quarter-hour of FP2. The 21-year-old then came alarmingly close to smashing his car again late on Friday afternoon through the castle section but was able to continue unscathed.
Despite the lack of track time and his inexperience around Baku’s quirky street circuit, Colapinto turned pain into pleasure with a perfectly judged qualifying hour to put himself ninth on the grid. He also became the first teammate to outqualify Alex Albon for a grand prix since Nicholas Latifi at the 2022 British Grand Prix.
[lawrence-auto-related count=3 category=1388]
Vowles, who made the sudden call to axe Logan Sargeant in the middle of the Netherlands-Italy doubleheader late last month, said the Argentine was already vindicating his decision.
“I hope the world can see what we were seeing now and why he deserves a chance in that seat,” he told SiriusXM. “He’s made me proud, he really has — second race weekend, track he’s never been to before, made a mistake.
“When I spoke to him about it I said, ‘You will make a mistake. It’s going to happen, and I’d prefer you do it early on than later on.’ Because you learn from all the things that built up towards it.
“After that mistake, though, instead of anything else, he did what we asked him to do. He built back up gently into FP3, and qualifying is qualifying. That’s where you shine, and he was outstanding.
“There was a little mistake, and he’ll be very disappointed in himself — about 0.3s of mistake in the castle section, and that would have put him in a strong position for tomorrow. But irrespective, we’re two races into his F1 career, he’s there fighting Alex, who’s immensely strong. It’s a good accolade. “
Albon likely would have had Colapinto’s measure in Q3 but failed to complete his out-lap in time to start his final flyer after this team sent him onto the track with a cooling fan still plugged into his roll hoop air intake.
Well… this is a new one 😅
A quite remarkable start to Q3 for Alex Albon!#F1 #AzerbaijanGP pic.twitter.com/QgCCTVz95y
— Formula 1 (@F1) September 14, 2024
The Thai driver stopped in pit exit to remove it himself, discarding the fluoro yellow cooling unit by the side of the road before rejoining the track, though the delay meant he missed the checkered flag. It was a highly unusual error from the team, which Vowles explained as being down to two protocol failures.
“The main reason behind it is the turnaround was compressed into a very short space of time — around about 40 seconds or so, which is shorter than it normally would be,” he explained. “On this particular occasion, for reasons I need to go through, we installed a permanent fan rather than holding a temporary fan, because that’s the real solution behind it. You never install anything permanent in 40 seconds; you do if it’s five minutes. As a result of that, one of the checks in place wasn’t completed and the car left without that.
“Even then we could have caught it, so two failings we’ve got to go through — why did we install permanent when we should have installed perhaps something that was temporary, and could we have caught it earlier? Because even then he would have got a lap in.”
Albon and the team were summoned to a post-session stewards investigation for an unsafe release.
With Colapinto and Albon starting ninth and 10th and behind only Fernando Alonso among the other midfield runners, Vowles was optimistic that points were in the offing on Sunday.
“The long runs on Friday were competitive relative to Aston Martin,” he said. “We should be in a position where we are at least fighting with them.
“You always have to have one eye behind you because, frankly, that’s what the midfield is these days. Even though you are ahead, it’s milliseconds separating all of us. The real focus is two cars finishing in the points. That has to be what we walk away with.”