Franco Colapinto ‘surprised’ by Lando Norris’s call for a ban

The Azerbaijan Grand Prix had been running suspiciously quietly for 35 laps until an accident involving Alex Albon (Williams) triggered an unfortunate chain of events: At the restart following the safety car period, a mass pile-up occurred, the repercussions of which are set to carry over into the race weekend at Sepang – both in terms of penalties (a five-place grid penalty for Colapinto) and personal exchanges between those involved.

What happened? Alpine driver Franco Colapinto’s wheels locked up at the restart, causing him to lose control of his car. He took out his team-mate Pierre Gasly as well as Lando Norris (McLaren). Other cars sustained damage or were forced to swerve out of the way, but for Colapinto, Gasly and Norris, the race was over.

It was doubly bitter for Alpine, of course – at least one, if not both, of their cars would probably have finished in the points had the race proceeded normally. Lando Norris was further down the field, in ninth place at the restart, but could probably have been happy with a points-scoring finish. The Brit was so angry after the race that he called for Franco Colapinto to be banned from racing.

Colapinto takes responsibility

Colapinto explained during his media session ahead of the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia: “I’ve taken full responsibility and apologised. I made a mistake. My wheels locked up at Turn 1 and, unfortunately, that had serious consequences, which is sad. We’ve talked about it within the team and discussed how to move forward and avoid something like this in future.”

Colapinto/Norris: Surprise and understanding

Did he also have a word with Norris, who had railed quite strongly against Colapinto and called for a ban? Colapinto: “I think that was in the heat of the moment. Of course, he knows what kind of comments he triggered with that, because he’s suffered from it himself.” Even Argentine politicians had weighed in. Lando Norris had already spoken openly about online hate in the past.

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Colapinto: “He’s probably the driver who’s spoken most about hate in recent years. So I was a bit surprised by that. But then, of course, he apologised. Unfortunately, he also faced a lot of hate for it, but I felt the same way. It’s a delicate situation with the outside world, and that’s why I think we need to be careful about what we say. But I do understand that you say things like that in the heat of the moment.’ Even in the run-up to the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, there had been a stir over online abuse by Colapinto’s fans.