The first day of the Formula 1 preseason tests in Bahrain ended this Wednesday with bad news for Argentine fans because Franco Colapinto suffered a failure in his car, which caused a red flag and slowed his progress in testing aboard his Alpine.
The driver from Buenos Aires gave his testimony to the media stationed at the circuit, among which was Motorsport, and provided more details about the inconvenience that took him off the track.“We had some problems with the car in the morning and, yes, I didn’t do many laps,” Colapinto explained in his first sensations.He then linked this situation to the logical testing of a renewed monoposto to adapt to the regulatory changes of 2026: “It’s part of the tests and things typical of new cars, so we are all learning together. Hopefully we can learn from that and simply prevent it from happening again.”
In the press release released by Alpine, the Argentine explained: “My morning has not been smooth and some problems have shortened a large part of the program we had planned. These types of things happen in training, especially with a new car, and it is important that we learn from them and provide solutions.”
It all happened at the entrance to the hairpin in turn 8 of the Sakhir layout. He tried to restart the A526, but he couldn’t and this resulted in his car being removed from the asphalt by a crane and taken to the team pits, after the first hour and a half of the four hours of track activity during the first shift of the day had passed.
*The video of the problem that Colapinto suffered in his car
Franco Colapinto was left out of the tests for 20 minutes and came out of the pits again with medium tires (C2 compound).He even improved his time to close the stopwatch at 1:40:330.On a personal level, the lack of reliability deprived him of opportunities to continue gaining confidence and climb positions.He came in last place out of 11 drivers in the morning classification, 4.897 seconds behind leader Max Verstappen (1:35:433), although the times from these tests are not representative.The day was completed with the afternoon table, in which LandoNorris, current champion, surpassed the Dutchman’s record and placed himself at the top with a lap of 1:34:669.
“Pierre was able to complete a good number of laps in the afternoon, which gives us a lot of data to analyze. I hope we can have a productive day and accumulate more kilometers when he returns to the track on Friday. It will be interesting to attack the car a little while we continue with its development in Bahrain. I am looking forward to working with the team tomorrow, monitoring the situation closely and getting back behind the wheel at the end of the week,” Franco expressed to the Alpine press.
Alpine CEO Steve Nielsen referred to the mishaps sustained by the former Williams man in statements released by the team: “We had some problems on the first day of pre-season testing here in Bahrain. Several problems with the car forced us to stop more than once during the morning session to carry out some repairs.”
“As expected with a completely new car, there will always be some problems and it is important that we solve them quickly and take measures to prevent them from happening again. Sometimes, that is something inherent to the tests, and it is important to see a positive reaction from the entire team, including the drivers, when managing some of those setbacks,” he elaborated in the same vein as the South American.
When analyzing how his car changed from one year to the next, FrancoColapinto avoided getting ahead of himself: “It’s different, I think we have to wait and see. I only have a couple of days in the car and the teams’ process is different; we are choosing to try to learn as much as possible and maximize the laps we are doing. I think there is still a lot to find and a lot to improve in each team and in each car, so it is too early to say if I like it or I don’t like it.”It is worth noting that he will rest on Thursday to leave the center of the scene to Pierre Gasly and will return on Friday to complete the first week of testing in the Middle East.
“Many more things are going to come and I’m sure that’s going to change a little how the cars react and how we drive them. It’s different, that’s the main thing, it’s nothing like what one would have expected from last year’s car, but we are learning together and trying to get the most out of it,” he concluded.
This first preseason session will last until Friday, but will only feature the broadcast of the last hour of action.Colapinto added 151 kilometers in the 28 laps he did compared to the 265 kilometers covered by Gasly in the 49 laps of the second turn.The Frenchman placed eighth (1:36.765).
In relation to this, Nielsen highlighted the Frenchman’s production: “In the afternoon, we managed to turn the situation around well and solve some of the problems from the morning session, and we had a somewhat more productive session with Pierre. The goal is to return tomorrow with Pierre behind the wheel all day and add more laps and mileage to the car, while we continue to learn and improve the package.”
