Franco Colapinto was the sensation of the Sprint qualifying rounds of the US Grand Prix with a finish in SQ3. Despite a spin on his last lap of the day, the Williams F1 driver beat Alex Albon and he will start tenth for the Sprint in Austin. However, he remains frustrated by his mistake.
“Yes, I’m a little upset because I was in a good situation, we could have fought with the other cars and I made a mistake in turn 1, then I slid in turn 7 so I I tried to make up for lost time but it didn’t work.” said Colapinto.
“I didn’t have a clean lap in SQ3 and I feel bad about that because I think we could have been in the top 8 seeing what we did in SQ2. It’s frustrating but we We’re here and we’ll be close to the points even if there aren’t many. We only had an hour to learn the track, I made good progress but I could do better.”
The Argentinian is amused at having managed to find more grip by attacking harder, and he nevertheless explains that he made a mistake in his request for adjustment changes: “I was attacking more and there was a lot of downforce! As they say, the faster you go, the more grip you have. I tried this technique and it worked!”
“It was a good qualifier, I’m just mad at myself because I made changes I shouldn’t have made. It didn’t work in Baku and I didn’t learn from it, I asked the same thing here for the SQ3 and it still didn’t work. I have to learn from this and understand the limit of the tires.
Alex Albon should have managed to qualify in SQ2 but a spin at very high speed prevented him from doing so and he will be on the ninth row. He doesn’t make excuses for going off the track and explains that his settings are wrong.
“No, it was a mistake on my part, I hit the curb inside. I wanted a stiffer car, it was good in free practice but I should have gone back to something softer for the qualifiers, it was a stupid mistake on my part” said the Thai.
“The lap was okay, not great but it would have been enough to move into SQ2. We shouldn’t change things too much, but I flattened out these tires which we should have used in the Sprint race tomorrow, because it is compromised and it will serve as a test before qualification.”
