Franco Colapinto, Pierre Gasly, Alpine, Circuit of the Americas, 2025

Franco Colapinto’s failure to follow Alpine’s order to “hold positions” will be discussed internally, said the team’s managing director Steve Nielsen.

The team told Colapinto not to overtake his team mate as he caught Pierre Gasly in the final laps of today’s race. Gasly was running 17th in front of his team mate and Gabriel Bortoleto, the last-placed runner in his Sauber.

Colapinto’s race engineer Stuart Barlow told him “both cars are managing here, we need to hold positions please.” Colapinto challenged the instruction, telling Barlow: “But he’s slow.”

The trio were being caught by race leader Max Verstappen at the time. As Bortoleto slowed so Verstappen could lap him at the exit of turn 20, on the penultimate lap Colapinto dived down the inside of Gasly at the first corner and passed his team mate.

Gasly then fell to last place on the final lap when Bortoleto attacked him at the first corner. Afterwards Nielsen said the team “have a lot to review across the board from this weekend.”

He said Gasly had been disadvantaged by a slow pit stop early in the race and they had to monitor their fuel levels carefully as they were unsure whether Verstappen would lap their cars before the end of the race.

“On Pierre’s side, we covered an undercut threat to box onto softs a little earlier than we wanted,” said Nielsen, “and then had a slow pit stop, which we will review and rectify.

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“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.”

It is the second time in the last three races the Alpine drivers had swapped positions in the final laps. In Baku, Gasly timed an attack on Colapinto as the pair were being lapped by Verstappen to pass his team mate.

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