Alpine chief Flavio Briatore says he will take time to "reflect on what course of action should be taken" after Franco Colapinto's "very poor" error caused a three-car collision in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. Attempting to make a bold move from 10th place down the inside into Turn One at the first Safety Car restart, Colapinto locked his brakes and hit the side of team-mate Pierre Gasly, who was sent straight into Lando Norris' McLaren on his outside. All three drivers retired.
Gasly had been running a strong seventh at the time and the incident cost Alpine what stood as seven points overall. With both Alpines and Norris having dropped out ahead of him, Arvid Lindblad instead came through late in the race to finish seventh and stretch Racing Bulls' lead over Alpine in the fight for fifth place in the Constructors' Championship to 15 points with a scheduled eight rounds left. Speaking in Alpine's official press release after the race, executive advisor Briatore made clear his frustration at Colapinto's driving, for which the Argentine unreservedly apologised, and said they would work out what to do to ensure lessons were learnt to avoid a repeat in future.
"Obviously I'm extremely disappointed with the outcome of today's race, knowing we lost valuable points in the Championship fight," said Briatore. "These sorts of incidents shouldn't happen, particularly when we were running well with both cars in point-scoring positions. Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player "I feel very sorry for the team and for Pierre who did a great job all weekend and my apologies also go to Lando [Norris] and McLaren for ruining their race.
"I know that Franco has taken full responsibility for it, as he should; in fact he braked far too late considering the context of the race and the safety car restart. It was a very poor move for a driver of his experience. "I want to take time to reflect on it and consider what course of action should be taken, so we can learn from it and avoid such a situation in future." Colapinto will take a five-place grid penalty at this coming week's Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia in lieu of the 10-second time penalty he was unable to serve in the race as he had retired.
"Following the restart, COL approached GAS from behind into Turn 1. COL braked too late and entered the corner on the inside at a speed which did not allow him to make the corner in a controlled manner."He overshot the corner and made contact with the left-hand side of GAS, who then hit NOR and both cars retired."The Stewards considered that COL was wholly or predominantly to blame for the collision."Although the incident occurred at the first corner following the restart, there was no contribution from another driver which would justify applying the first-lap / first corner more lenient approach."The standard penalty for causing a collision is a 10-second time penalty."As COL had retired from the Race and was therefore unable to serve the time penalty, the Stewards converted the penalty to a drop of five grid positions at the next Race in which the driver participates." Speaking in the immediate aftermath of the incident, a frustrated Norris said that drivers who cause incidents like Colapinto did should be banned for one race. Andrea Stella, Norris' McLaren team boss, said they trusted the stewards to make the right decisions, adding that drivers should also be expected to race with "a certain degree of just common sense".
"It's a complex matter," said Stella before Colapinto's converted grid drop was officially confirmed. "I guess this is being reviewed by the stewards as we speak, pretty much. I'm sure it will be reviewed by Flavio as well.
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