Colapinto 18th in first Dutch GP practice session in F1 | OneFootball

The Argentine clocked a time of 1:12.276 and was just under two seconds behind Lando Norris, the leader of the session. Pierre Gasly, his teammate at Alpine, finished 10th at 1.335.

Franco Colapinto finished 18th in the first free practice of the Dutch Grand Prix in Formula 1. The Argentine clocked a time of 1:12.276 and was just under two seconds behind the session leader, Lando Norris (1:10.278). Pierre Gasly, the other Alpine driver, finished tenth at 1.335 behind the Briton. Review the highlights of FP1 at Zandvoort.

After a three-week break, F1 returned on a rather complex circuit, not only because of its layout, somewhat outdated for these times and the size of the cars, but also because of the weather conditions. The first free practice was marked by strong gusts of wind and black clouds threatening possible rain which ultimately did not materialize. Nevertheless, heavy rain is expected for the second session.

In this context, Colapinto took his first laps on the track in a Formula 1 car and was far from the leading positions. During his initial laps with medium tires, he couldn't break the two-second barrier compared to the McLarens, and when he switched to soft tires to practice qualifying pace, he did so by just two thousandths. Towards the end, they put yellow tires back on and loaded fuel to adapt to race-like conditions. In total, the native of Pilar completed 26 laps.

The start of the practice was marked by several off-track incidents, especially in the chicane that begins the third sector of the circuit. Lewis Hamilton spun, Yuki Tsunoda went off track, and seconds later Kimi Antonelli did the same. Unlike the Japanese driver, the Italian from Mercedes got stuck in the gravel and couldn't continue, causing the first red flag of the weekend.

McLaren confirmed their dominance with their drivers occupying the top two spots on the podium (Oscar Piastri finished second, 292 thousandths behind Norris) and another team that started the weekend well was Aston Martin. Lance Stroll was third, exactly half a second behind the Briton, while Fernando Alonso finished fourth, less than a tenth behind his teammate. The local, Max Verstappen, finished sixth, 0.940 off the top.

The positions of FP1 in the Netherlands

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇪🇸 here.