Alpine-Colapinto partnership making steady gains

Alpine believes Franco Colapinto’s performance at the Canadian Grand Prix shows his Miami level was not an anomaly, as it hopes it is the start of a consistent run of form.

Colapinto struggled in the opening part of the season to regularly compete with teammate Pierre Gasly, scoring just one point compared to Gasly’s 15 in the opening three rounds. A seventh place in Miami was a strong response for Colapinto and he followed that with a career-best sixth in Canada (pictured above) – eclipsing Gasly, who finished eighth. While encouraged by the turnaround for his young driver, Alpine managing director Steve Nielsen says there hasn’t been one single catalyst for the uptick in results.

“Honestly I’m not sure exactly what it is, it’s a combination of lots of things, but it won’t be the chassis, that I can tell you,” Nielsen told SiriusXM. “The reason we changed chassis is because it is very slightly lighter – it was the third one rather than the first one, and the first one is always a little bit heavier. So that was consequential rather than any other performance beyond the weight.

“Franco’s doing super-well – confident, seems to be coming together. He did a super weekend in Miami and that’s continued [in Montreal], so Miami wasn’t a blip. Franco has always been talented, we’ve known that. Sometimes he’s struggled to produce that talent consistently, but from a sample of the last two hopefully we’re in a new era where he can do it every weekend.”

Colapinto’s performances are even more well-timed because they come at a stage where Gasly – who finished eighth in Montreal – has looked less comfortable in the Alpine, following the introduction of an upgrade in Miami.

“Even now Pierre’s not super-happy with the balance of the car, so we’ve definitely got some issues to fix, and some of that started in Miami, so we’ve definitely got work to do to identify that," Nielsen admitted. "He managed to drive around those issues in the race and did very, very well, but he’s not completely happy with the car.”

The double points score returned 12 points in Canada, further cementing Alpine’s position as leading the midfield in the constructors’ championship. Having finished bottom of the standings last year, Nielsen says it’s not just the new Mercedes power unit supply deal that has provided such a big step forward.

“It’s not one thing, it’s hundreds or thousands things done better," he said. "Yes, the PU is very good, but it’s not just that, it’s lots of things. We’ve made a much better car – we said this in pre-season testing, our car is much better than the one last year – so it’s hundreds if not thousands of details done slightly better, and the combination of that is better performance. There’s no silver bullet; it’s lots of things.”