Franco Colapinto had the podium in his sights at Monza. Then he found the gravel at Lesmo, and found out exactly how quickly a career-best afternoon can turn into a car park full of what-ifs.
The Alpine driver was fourth on the grid for the second start of the Italian Grand Prix, having already carved his way through the field once before a red flag reset the whole afternoon. He duly went again, lunged down the inside of Max Verstappen into the first chicane and briefly had third place in his pocket. Verstappen took it straight back on the run to the Variante della Roggia. Moments later Colapinto lost the rear of his Alpine through Lesmo and speared into the gravel, dropping from third to sixteenth in the time it takes to blink. He recovered to finish ninth, salvaging points from what had briefly looked like Alpine’s best weekend of the season. The race itself was chaotic, with Kimi Antonelli taking victory, but Colapinto’s afternoon tells a different story.
A Race That Was Building Toward Something
Colapinto’s Monza started well before that restart. He lined up seventh, gained a place at the first start when Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton collided and sent Hamilton backwards through the order, then picked up another position when Leclerc crashed out at the end of the second lap. He passed Oscar Piastri moments later, before the red flag paused the whole grand prix and reset the story from scratch.
None of that mattered once the lights went out again. Fourth on the restart grid, Colapinto immediately targeted Verstappen and got the move done into the first chicane, a genuinely eye-catching piece of overtaking against a four-time world champion. The Red Bull driver reclaimed the place almost immediately, which is roughly what you’d expect, but for a few hundred metres an Alpine was running ahead of a Red Bull at the sharp end of a grand prix, and that alone tells you how strong the car was underneath him that weekend.
The Mistake
Then it unravelled. Through Lesmo, with seemingly no warning, Colapinto lost the rear of the car, speared through the gravel and dropped from third to sixteenth in one movement. He was still processing it hours later.
“I had a great opportunity and I didn’t take it, so I’m sad, really sad about that. I think it could have been a great race, and that was a big mistake. I missed a very important opportunity for the team and for myself, so I’m a bit sad about that. Learning from this is difficult.” – Franco Colapinto
That quote came through tears, delivered to ESPN Argentina in the immediate aftermath. By the time he reached the written press in Monza, including Motorsport.com, the tears had dried but the frustration clearly hadn’t.
“I’m just frustrated. I think I did some good stuff. I don’t know, I just lost the car completely in Turn 5-6, a bit out of nowhere, it’s very frustrating. I think we could have done some good things, P2 and P3 together, and you feel so strong and suddenly fighting with the top teams, you get very motivated very quickly, and a mistake like that, it throws all away, and I’m just frustrated.” – Franco Colapinto
What stands out here is how specific the disappointment is. He isn’t mourning a vague missed opportunity, he’s mourning a concrete one: running second and third in a car that had absolutely no business being there against Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull, and knowing precisely how rare that window is for a driver in an Alpine.
Somehow Still Salvaging Something
The damage from the gravel excursion looked terminal in the moment. Colapinto admitted he genuinely thought the race was over for him.
“I don’t really understand yet what happened. I lost the car very aggressively, I went very fast through the gravel, I had a lot of damage, I thought I was going to have to retire, and then we started to go again, we changed the car a bit with the tools, we closed everything up a little bit and made the car slightly more draggy again, and yeah, managed to score points.” – Franco Colapinto
Credit where it’s due: clawing back from sixteenth to ninth in a car nursing visible damage is not nothing, and it’s the sort of recovery drive that would have been the headline on a quieter weekend. Instead it’s a footnote to his own mistake, which is its own kind of cruel.
Gasly’s Pole Only Sharpens the Sting
What makes the whole afternoon sting more is that his teammate Pierre Gasly had taken a stunning pole position at Monza, the sort of result that doesn’t come round often for Alpine, only to finish seventh in the race itself. That in itself proves how hard the podium was always going to be to hold onto, but it did nothing to soften Colapinto’s mood.
“Just frustrated with not maximising the car and the good stuff that we were doing together, and yeah, I think just learn for the future. But we don’t get many of these opportunities fighting up there and at the front, and it’s extra frustrating to have moments like this. I think we should have scored more points, so, sorry to the team, and hopefully we can do better in Madrid.” – Franco Colapinto
Even his brush with Verstappen, a genuine highlight for most drivers in Colapinto’s position, got waved away rather than celebrated. Asked about the move into the chicane, he shrugged off the significance while still making clear how much it hurt to lose the bigger picture.
“I think when you’re in the car you don’t really feel the difference if it’s one or another, but it was cool to be fighting with them. That’s what I meant before, and to be fighting side-by-side with the top cars and the top teams, we cannot really do it. And so to just miss an opportunity like this, it’s very painful.” – Franco Colapinto
Context Nobody Asked For, But It’s There
Colapinto arrives at this reflective moment having just been confirmed to stay with Alpine into 2027, so there’s no immediate pressure attached to one lost afternoon. That security probably makes the mistake easier to admit and harder to forgive in equal measure. It’s a lot simpler to own up to throwing away a podium when your seat isn’t on the line because of it. Whether that changes how he processes days like this over a full season remains to be seen, but the raw honesty on display at Monza, tears included, was more compelling than most of what actually happened at the front of the field.
