Franco Colapinto has revealed that, for the first time in his motorsport career, he finally had a \u201cproper off-season\u201d ahead of his first full-time Formula 1 campaign.<\/p>\n
For the past two seasons, Colapinto has found himself stepping into a seat mid-year. In 2024, he replaced Logan Sargeant at Williams following the Dutch Grand Prix, before taking Jack Doohan\u2019s seat at Alpine from Imola onwards last year.<\/p>\n
With him remaining at Alpine for 2026, Colapinto has undergone his first winter break as an F1 driver, allowing him to become even more integrated with the Enstone-based outfit.<\/p>\n
Not only that, but Friday afternoon\u2019s launch of Alpine\u2019s A526 was Colapinto\u2019s first in the pinnacle of motorsport, highlighting how relatively inexperienced the 22-year-old still is.<\/p>\n
The new power unit regulations mark the start of a new era for Alpine, with the team now a Mercedes customer outfit \u2014 and also presenting a huge opportunity for Colapinto.<\/p>\n
Colapinto finds himself on a level playing field, with him and all the drivers starting from scratch with the new cars.<\/p>\n
“Firstly, I am so excited,” said Colapinto. “For the first time in my career, I have had a proper off-season in preparation for a full-time year right from testing and the first race.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“For me, this is really important as I feel a real part of the project and it means I can really work hard with everyone at the team from the beginning.<\/p>\n
“We have had a good chance to see the car and prepare on the simulator. Of course, it is very different to anything I have experienced so far and I think that is the same for most drivers on the grid. There are new tricks and new challenges to learn to extract the most from the package and I see that as a truly amazing challenge.<\/p>\n
“I know everyone at the team is extremely motivated to have a good season. I will just try to learn as much as possible in the early races, keep building, keep growing and hopefully that will mean we can be competitive as a team.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Franco Colapinto has revealed that, for the first time in his motorsport career, he finally had a \u201cproper…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":434945,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,827,830,828,831,829,826,813,823,825,806,805,824,803,804,822,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-434944","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-motosport","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-daniel-ricciardo","11":"tag-f1-calendar","12":"tag-f1-live","13":"tag-f1-results","14":"tag-f1-standings","15":"tag-ferrari","16":"tag-formula-1","17":"tag-lewis-hamilton","18":"tag-max-verstappen","19":"tag-motor","20":"tag-motor-sports","21":"tag-motorsport","22":"tag-motosport","23":"tag-motosports","24":"tag-racing","25":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=434944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434944\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/434945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=434944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=434944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=434944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}