{"id":946894,"date":"2026-10-26T12:12:13","date_gmt":"2026-10-26T12:12:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/946894\/"},"modified":"2026-10-26T12:12:13","modified_gmt":"2026-10-26T12:12:13","slug":"franco-colapinto-responds-to-jeremy-clarksons-controversial-comment-about-him","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/946894\/","title":{"rendered":"Franco Colapinto responds to Jeremy Clarkson\u2019s controversial comment about him"},"content":{"rendered":"

Franco Colapinto<\/a> has responded to Jeremy Clarkson\u2019s comment that he would give the Alpine<\/a> Formula 1 driver a grid penalty for being Argentinian.<\/p>\n

Clarkson was a guest of Alpine\u2019s at the United States Grand Prix and gave an interview to Sky Sports F1 on Saturday, in which he joked: \u201cFranco\u2019s got a grid penalty for being Argentinian. Probably. Well, I\u2019d give him one for that. But anyway, that\u2019s just because of what happened when we went there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clarkson was referring to Colapinto\u2019s actual grid penalty for exceeding his power unit parts quota and, most likely, to his Top Gear show\u2019s 2014 Patagonia special. At the time, tensions emerged due to a contentious license plate that Argentinian protesters interpreted as a reference to the Falklands War, cutting the filming short.<\/p>\n

Alpine soon issued a statement in response to Clarkson\u2019s comment: \u201cWe at Alpine are aware of the comments made by a team guest in a recent television interview in Austin. Franco is our driver and has our full support.\u201d<\/p>\n

Twenty-four hours later, the issue was brought up to Colapinto himself in the post-race media pen.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course, it’s nothing to do with the team,\u201d he said. \u201cHe did an interview on his own, it’s nothing related to the team. I think he’s always been kind of joking, I don’t really know him, but they told me.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn’t see too much of what he said, but I heard that Jamie [Campbell-Walter, Colapinto\u2019s manager] put something on social media.<\/p>\n

\u201cI guess, just try to focus on ourselves. I try to improve the situation of course, it kind of needs help from a lot of people, not just from me. We’ll see how we end up, but yeah, not the best, I guess.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sideboard and floor broken by Lindblad collision
\n \"Franco <\/p>\n

Franco Colapinto, Alpine, Arvid Lindblad, Racing Bulls<\/p>\n

Photo by: Logan Riely \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n

Colapinto\u2019s Austin race was curtailed by a collision with Arvid Lindblad<\/a> in Turn 1 on lap 25, with the Racing Bulls<\/a> going around the outside for 14th position. Lindblad\u2019s left-hand sidepod and Colapinto\u2019s front-right corner touched, sending the Alpine into a spin \u2013 and, later on, into retirement.<\/p>\n

\u201cPierre [Gasly] was out of the pits, I was trying to keep Arvid behind, so Pierre could be ahead,\u201d Colapinto recounted. \u201cWe were the three of us side by side and I got sandwiched, so I got totally damaged. But it’s part of racing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe whole sideboard and floor was broken. A pity.<\/p>\n

\u201cI started from the back and then it really didn’t work from the start. I chose to do it on the hard to see if we could do something interesting, but we couldn’t.<\/p>\n

\u201cI’m looking forward to Mexico, to turn this around and not do the penalties and go back to finishing races.\u201d<\/p>\n

Colapinto has retired from three of the last four grands prix, having caused the Baku pile-up and suffered a suspected driveline issue in Singapore. That was as many retirements as in the rest of his F1 career.<\/p>\n

The Alpine driver did describe his race pace as \u201cvery strong\u201d over the weekend and is therefore hoping for decent results in the upcoming Latin American races in Mexico and Brazil.<\/p>\n

Read Also:<\/p>\n

We want your opinion!<\/p>\n

What would you like to see on Motorsport.com?<\/p>\n

Take our 5 minute survey.<\/a><\/p>\n

– The Motorsport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Franco Colapinto has responded to Jeremy Clarkson\u2019s comment that he would give the Alpine Formula 1 driver a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":946895,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[1035,37185,49,48,98681,578,576,577,1036,324148,82,102377],"class_list":["post-946894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-alpine","tag-arvid-lindblad","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-circuit-of-the-americas","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-franco-colapinto","tag-franco-colapinto-responds-to-jeremy-clarksonu2019s-controversial-comment-about-him","tag-sports","tag-united-states-gp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/946894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=946894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/946894\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/946895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=946894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=946894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=946894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}