From brilliance in Baku to struggles in Sao Paulo – Colapinto’s 9 Grand Prix weekends so far ranked

Franco Colapinto will return to the Formula 1 grid next weekend when he takes over Jack Doohan’s Alpine race seat at the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix. Ahead of the Argentinian’s comeback, F1.com revisits his stand-in run for Williams over the second half of the 2024 season to provide a race-by-race ranking of his efforts…

Colapinto burst onto the F1 scene at Monza last year, when Williams opted to promote their academy member and F2 race winner in favour of Logan Sargeant, who was struggling for pace alongside Alex Albon – and struggling to keep his car on the track.

ANALYSIS: Why Alpine chose to promote Colapinto and bench Doohan – concluding a dramatic 12 hours after Oakes’ resignation

It was a strong start for the 21-year-old Colapinto, who impressed many paddock observers with his initially cool, calm and collected displays en route to Q3 appearances and points finishes – but there were also some costly mistakes and crashes along the way.

Scroll down for a review of Colapinto’s weekends from worst to best…

#9 – Brazil

Aside from a practice shunt in Azerbaijan, which he brilliantly bounced back from (more on that later), Colapinto kept things relatively clean across his first five Grands Prix at the wheel, but that record was dramatically undone during a severely rain-hit event at Interlagos.

Colapinto crashed in Qualifying and the Grand Prix around the Sao Paulo venue, undoing the hard work of his mechanics between sessions (which were both held on Sunday) and leaving them with a huge amount more to do before the next round in Las Vegas.