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Alpine F1 Team

Alpine express 'disappointment' in Franco Colapinto disobedience

Alpine was not happy with Franco Colapinto's actions during the United States Grand Prix — and shared its disapproval afterwards.

Colapinto
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Alpine managing director Steve Nielsen has said the team is "disappointed" that its instructions to Franco Colapinto during the United States Grand Prix were not followed.

In the closing stages of the 56-lap race at the Circuit of the Americas, the Argentine driver was told to hold position in P18 and not attack Pierre Gasly ahead.

The latter was on older tyres, having need to pit early to cover off an undercut, which left him vulnerable to his team-mate, who was, conversely, able to extend his first stint and therefore had fresher tyres.

Team orders were handed down to Colapinto, but the 22-year-old did not listen, taking matters into his own hands and overtaking the Frenchman at Turn 1.

The Enstone-based squad did not take his disobedience lightly. In his post-race remarks, Nielsen said: "As a team we have a lot to review across the board from this weekend.

"While our level of competitiveness is still far from being able to score points, it was encouraging to make a small step forward relative to recent events looking at the weekend as a whole.

"Today, like a lot of teams, we had to adapt our strategy based on the conditions and what we saw on track with the Hard tyre not looking to be a favourable race tyre.

"On Pierre's side, we covered an undercut threat to box onto softs, a little earlier than we wanted, and then had a slow pit-stop, which we will review and rectify.

"Franco was able to extend his medium run to have a tyre delta towards the end of the race where he caught up to Pierre.

"We gave the instruction for the drivers to maintain position as we were managing fuel with both cars and the added variable of the number of laps remaining with the leaders in close proximity.

"As a team, any instruction made by the pit wall is final and today we are disappointed that this didn't happen so it's something we will review and deal with internally."

Colapinto's view

Colapinto is fighting for his seat at Team Enstone and, by extension, his career in F1. Having taken over the second Alpine from Jack Doohan six rounds into the current campaign, he is yet to score a point this season.

Now, with only a handful of rounds to go, he needs to impress de facto team principal Flavio Briatore, or risk being sidelined for reserve driver Paul Aron.

"A tough day and a tough weekend in general for us as a team," said Colapinto in his own post-race team comments.

"On my side, it's not been too smooth and I have generally struggled a lot with the car. We learned a lot session by session and the aim is to just try and be stronger each time we are on track and we will have another chance to do that in Mexico City next weekend.

"We will keep working hard as a team and just try to find those improvements. At the end, I had slightly fresher tyres than Pierre and saw Gabriel [Bortoleto] attacking. I wanted to keep him behind both of us, so it is something we will discuss as a team and learn from moving forwards."

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